Hello, The US govt. specifically NRL, has a patent on an anonymous communications infrastructure called Onion Routing. I am one of the inventors. We are working on a GPL/LGPL-like license for this.
As you may know, US govt. work is not subject to copyright and thus cannot be GPLed directly, only through a patent license such as this. I have already had the patents-are-evil discussion at great length. I will not have it here, so don't try to engage me in it. My purpose is to make the best possible use I can of this patent and to do so as quickly as possible. I have looked at the Red Hat "Promise" and Raph Levien's license, various "open patent" ideas. None seems to quite provide what I want. In particular... Some goals: To foster development of such systems, with an eye towards standardization. To provide the same basic protections as GPL for the infrastructure itself. To allow proprietary interfaces into the infrastructure to encourage commercial use and development of the technology, hence the allowance of LGPL. To prevent use of the patent under the license without distributing source code by running systems, perhaps even providing a service, and not distributing binaries; thus remaining compliant with `the letter of GPL, but not the spirit'. To be compatible with incorporating other GPL and LGPL programs into the system. To cover both US govt developed code and non-govt code (subject to copyright). Below is what I now have. I would appreciate comments. Also, I hope to have the license in place in 2 weeks or so, so don't wait a long time to respond. Sincerely, Paul Syverson NRL hereby grants a fully paid up, nonexclusive, royalty free license to practice the patent 6,266,704 if and only if such practice is the development or use of computer software such that 1. Source code for all programs developed under this license must be publicly available, and public notice provided of means to obtain said source code. 2. All source code developed under this license must conspicuously and appropriately publish this license and an appropriate disclaimer of warranty on each copy; and must keep intact all the notices that refer to this license and to the absence of any warranty. 3. The publicly available source code under clauses 1 and 2 must either be US Govt work not subject to copyright or be copyright and made available according to the terms of any version of the GNU General Public License or the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston MA 02111. 4. Source code for all programs used under this license must be publicly available, and public notice provided of means to obtain said source code. 5. The publicly available source code under clause 4 must either be US Govt work not subject to copyright or be copyright and made available according to the terms of any version of the GNU General Public License or the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston MA 02111. 6. This license is irrevocable. Any other use requires separate licensing agreement with NRL. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
