On 9/6/05, Attila Kinali <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 08:59:22 -0400 > Timothy Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > I'm hoping that someone jerk doesn't try to test this in court or > > > > something. This is intended to be a statement of my intent, and I > > > > hope people will honor it. I guess you can't expect everyone to be > > > > honorable. I wonder how precise I need to be with this. > > > > > > Precise enough to catch 99% of the traps without being complicated. > > > I do not know whether we will face any jerks, but this license > > > will be an example for other companies and we should be prepared > > > that someone will try it in curt. > > > > Ok, I see your point. Forward-thinking. > > Actualy there is another point we have to keep in mind: > Patents! > Ie what happens if someone sends a patch that we can freely > use and copy (from a copyright point of view) but not use > in a comercial product[1] because of patents that apply to it? > > There are two ways to deal with it: Ignore the issue completely. > This worked sofar for most of the OSS projects i know[2]. > They just simply say that they cannot check for patents > as there are too many. The other way would be to force > the patch commiters to check for patents and/or force them > to license the patents for free for this project. > > [1] i explicitly said commercial, because the european > patent treaty only covers comercial use of patents. > Ie they simply ignore non-commercial use of them by which > it is possible to use patents in a non-commercial enviroment > (actualy it's a gray zone, but that's a different story) > > [2] The only project i know that has been threatened > by a patent is libdca (formerly known as libdts) by > DTS Inc. Although the patent is not valid in France, > they still had to back off because noone had the money > to defend their rights in curt.
For the OSS side, patents aren't a problem. For Traversal, they're a BIG problem. > The only thing i see that could be missing, is a statement > that nothing but clause 2 may be changed or removed. Once clause 2 is removed, it's not my project. It's a fork of my project that's in someone else's hands, and I only have a say over it if they violate the GPL (because, after all, I still have copyright). Or am I missing something? _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
