> 5. Reciprocity. If You institute patent litigation against a
> Contributor with respect to a patent applicable to software
> (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit), then
> any patent licenses granted by that Contributor to You under
> this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is
> filed.
This first clause applies to any lawsuit against any contributor regarding any patent "applicable to software". This is *way* too broad to be free. Suppose SCO had been a Contributor and had granted an appropriate patent license. Then IBM would lose its patent license under this License due to an *entirely different* case not connected to this work. Further, suppose that there exists one legitimate patent somewhere in the world which is applicable to software -- it cannot be enforced against any contributor ever without losing the Apache license. That's quite a bizarre and extreme requirement.
In addition, if You institute patent litigation against
any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a
lawsuit) alleging that the Work itself (excluding combinations
of the Work with other software or hardware) infringes Your
patent(s), then any patent licenses granted to You under this
License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such
In contrast, this second clause should be considered DFSG-free, I believe. It states that claiming that *this work* infringes your patents causes your patent licenses for *this work* to be terminated. This is a clause protecting the work's freeness, which *only* applies to people attempting to make the work non-free.litigation is filed.
Anyone else agree with my assessment? :-)
--Nathanael
