On Jun 8, 2005, at 4:37 PM, Steve Blackburn wrote:
Dalibor Topic wrote:
Many people don't see the need to look at non-free software in
general, and chances are pretty slim that anyone I know will ever
get that bored and out of reading material to accept the 'Read
only' license, for an example of a very funny non-free software
license.
I have never looked at non-free implementations, but I am
interested to know what this means for those of us who have
extensive exposure to implementations such as Kaffe (GPL) or Jikes
RVM (CPL). My reading of it is that I can't work on any part of
Harmony for which I am tainted by my Jikes RVM exposure without
permission from the copyright holder of Jikes RVM. Is that right?
I suppose that we can start thinking about some kind of exception
that carves out exposure to any open source VM or class library (or
something like that...)
There still are problems in terms of patent, but we have that anyway.
Here's one of the risks of current practice in patent grant, I
think.. Suppose I have a patent, contribute code that infringes on
that patent under the Apache License to some project Foo, and thus
also grant Foo a patent license covering that infringement of my
patent. So as far as Foo and users of Foo go, all is fine.
Now you come and take that code from Foo, which is perfectly fine
because it's an OSS project under the Apache License, and drop it
into Harmony. Putting aside the proposed rules for "bulk"
contributions of repurposed code, Harmony now has a problem - we are
a derivative work of Foo (not a problem in itself) and thus have no
patent rights.
Hm.
I guess the solution there is that we can't take code from Foo
without all authors being Authorized Committers, so you'd have to get
me to agree to the contribution, under the Apache License to Harmony,
and thus get the same patent rights?
Paging lawyers... paging lawyers.... I know you're reading this... :)
geir
--
Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
