On Wed, 2008-05-14 at 10:37 -0400, al davis wrote: > On Wednesday 14 May 2008, Peter Clifton wrote: > > I suspect the "tivo" additions to GPLv3 don't really apply to > > our kind of software. > > Yes, they do. > > Maybe not gschem, because it doesn't push the state of the art, > but there are known issues with gnucap. Icarus is vulnerable > too. PCB, probably not yet, but if that new autorouter is any > good....
Are you saying that people will sell hardware solutions incorporating gnucap / pcb, and locked down to specifically targeted versions of software? The TiVO problem was that users couldn't upgrade / replace the software, not that it gets used in commercial applications. If you don't want commercial use, you need a much more restrictive license than GPL. > > I'm not really sure about the patent aspects, but can't see > > how they are of much immediate use to us. I guess it would > > perhaps protect us if someone added code they owned a patent > > for, or if someone distributing our software did own patents > > which we infringed. However, I'm unsure whether either of > > these are likely cases for gEDA. > > You do something that somebody else decides to patent. Urm.. as I've said before, that is prior art, and I see no reason why GPLv3 makes this any different. If the FSF will only help fight on behalf of those who licensed their prior art under GPLv3 (and not v2 or later), then that is plain bribery to use their latest favourite license. > Somebody else builds on your work, and gets a patent based on > their enhancements, something you had already planned to do but > didn't yet because of a lack of time. > > This has actually happened, in EDA. If the enhancements don't fall into the "obvious" or prior art category, then you have no claims if you didn't get there first. Lets say you have some simulator engine, un-patented. You can defend against someone trying to patent it because its prior art. Company "X" develops a simulation engine which uses the ideas / algorithms in your engine, plus some new, novel, non-obvious extras, then yes.. (sadly) they can patent their extension. The fact that you planned to do it has no bearing on the matter, (and is partly why patents are dangerous). Again, I don't see how GPLv3 can possibly help. > > A more likely scenario would be accidental infringement of > > someone else's patent, but no license can exonerate > > responsibility for that. > > "More likely" means "nearly 100% probability". > > The changes in GPLv3 are the result of actual issues. I don't doubt that, more whether they are issues we are likely to face. I don't oppose the GPLv3, but dislike the FUD that it must be forced upon people because it is "better". Looking specifically at our intentions, and what the licenses set out to achieve, I don't see a significant benefit in our case. That's not a reason _not_ to change of course. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev
