On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
> You're correct on the narrow point that the patent termination provision in
> Apache's proposed new license is of little value to the Apache Software
> Foundation itself. Since ASF owns no important patents and probably never
> will, the right to terminate their patent licenses if they are sued for
> patent infringement will never be exercised by them.
I think you misunderstand, or I do. The patent licenses that terminate
are the patent licenses from the contributors as they apply to
Apache-released software. The primary patent-related goal in Apache is to
prevent a company from sneaking code into the codebase covered by their
own patent and then seeking royalties from either the ASF or end-users,
whatever purpose those end-users have, commercial or otherwise.
Brian
