[Subject changed from "Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?"]
Alexander Terekhov wrote: "[...] IBM has an open patent licensing policy under which we are prepared to licence our patents on a non-discriminatory world-wide basis. Moreover, IBM licences on a royalty-free basis the patents that are necessarily implemented by the use or sale of our open source contributions, a policy that has been endorsed by the Open Source Initiative." [http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indprop/comp/ibm.pdf] I am not aware of any formal endorsement of this policy by Open Source Initiative. Should it be endorsed? As a personal matter, I welcome IBM's policy as far as it goes. But I believe the open source community also needs royalty-free patent licenses to IBM patents that are necessarily implemented by the use or sale of ***non-IBM*** open source contributions -- particularly those necessary to implement industry standard software. I would welcome IBM's commitment to THAT goal as well. This can perhaps be accomplished if IBM and other companies actively support open-source-friendly patent policies for standards organizations similar to that adopted by W3C, an effort that IBM has conspicuously refused to make outside of W3C. Without that, I suggest that IBM's stated "open patent licensing policy" is only a partial solution for open source. There is also a current conflict in open source licensing circles about how IBM and other companies use their patents for defensive purposes, with important implications for open source software. [See thread " termination with unrelated trigger considered harmful" on both [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am not aware that OSI has taken an official position on this or similar patent issues, and so nobody should read into the above quotation any implication that OSI endorses other of IBM's patent policies that affect open source. Simply because IBM included the above statement in its position paper on Europe's debate about "The Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions," you should not assume that OSI endorses IBM's overall position on software patents in Europe (see the above URL). In fact, as near as I can determine, there isn't a lot of enthusiasm in the open source community for software patents anywhere in the world. /Larry Rosen -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3