On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Stamnes, Michelle wrote: > Finally, under the proposed license, you can use the software in > Solaris or any other proprietary OS or in any other piece of software > (in addition to the GPL based OS's). You just don't have a patent > license; so you are no worse off than with the BSD license.
I'm afraid the license is not entirely clear on this point: This license shall include changes to the Software that are error corrections or other minor changes to the Software that do not add functionality or features when the Software is incorporated in any version of a operating system that has been distributed under the GNU General Public License 2.0 or later. Does that mean that the license *only* includes such changes to the software under *only* such operating systems? This patent license shall apply to the combination of the Software and any operating system licensed under the GNU Public License version 2.0 or later if, at the time Intel provides the Software to Recipient, such addition of the Software to the then publicly available versions of such operating system available under the GNU Public License version 2.0 or later (whether in gold, beta or alpha form) causes such combination to be covered by the Licensed Patents. It is not clear whether "this patent license" means the license to make 'bug-fixing/ modifications, or the license before that: Intel hereby grants Recipient and Licensees a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under Licensed Patents to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer the Software, if any, in source code and object code form. If it's the latter, then use is effectively restricted (through patent law, and not copyright law, but I don't think the OSD allows for such distinction). If it's the former, then the right to create derivative works is effectively restricted (again, through patent law and not copyright law). Please remember that the OSI certifies *software*, so - in my opinion - software distributed under this license, whose use or sale infringes upon patent claims licensable by Intel, restricts the user's ability to make derived works unacceptably, and discriminates against persons not using a GPL'd operating system. This means, IMO, that if software whose use or sale infringes upon patents is to be considered "OSI Certified Open Source Software," the patent license must also support the OSD. Compare this license to the license a while back that restricted the ability of the user to modify some "pay for this software" routines: if the copyright holder of that software managed to get a patent for his "pay for this software" routines, and distributed it under this license, would it be considered "OSI Certified Open Source Software"? -- Matthew Weigel Research Systems Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] ne [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3