On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 01:10:33AM +0000, Tsunakawa, Takayuki wrote: > From: Nico Williams [mailto:n...@cryptonector.com] > > On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 12:29:12AM +0000, Tsunakawa, Takayuki wrote: > > > How can one make defensive use of his patent if he allows everyone to > > > use it royalty-free? Can he use his patent for cross-licensing > > > negotiation if some commercial database vendor accuses his company > > > that PostgreSQL unintentionally infringes that vendor's patent? > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_termination > > Thank you, his looks reasonable to give everyone the grant. Then, I > wonder if the community can accept patented code if the patent holder > grants this kind of license.
I'm not a core member, but personally I'd be inclined to accept a royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-expiring, transferrable, ..., grant where the only condition is to not sue the patent holder. I don't object to patents in general, but I think patent lifetimes are way too long for software (because they are not commensurate with the costs of developing software), and I understand that often one must obtain patents for *defensive* purposes because there are sharks out there. So I'm inclined to accept patents with defensive but otherwise very wide grants. Nico --
