Lawrence E. Rosen wrote: > Arnoud Engelfriet responded: > > Actually it goes much further. If you sue any author of any > > AFL- licensed software for patent infringement, you lose all rights > > to *all* AFL-licensed software, as well as all rights to all > > other software with that same "poison pill" clause. Currently > > that means you also lose rights to all OSL-licensed software. > > Actually, the new AFL version 2.0 > (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/afl-2.0.php) doesn't contain that mutual > defense clause because some key folks really hated it and refused to use any > license that contained it.
Ah. It was a very inconvenient clause, yes, > infringement (i) against Licensor with respect to a patent > applicable to software So if I start any lawsuit against Licensor for *any* software patent, even if totally unrelated to the AFL-licensed work, I lose my rights under the license? That is still quite inconenient. The problem I have with this clause is that it is impossible to evaluate its impact in advance. With the GPL's patent clause you know its scope: the software you license. With the old AFL/OSL clause, and IMHO also with this new one, you don't know what your non-assert is going to be. In other words, you don't know what you are licensing. > This is very similar to the language in the Mozilla, IBM, Apple, and many > other licenses. The MPL only forces you to refrain from asserting patents on the software you are licensing. So this is much more reasonable. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
