IBM's open patent licensing policy

[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

Re: Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?

Russell McOrmond wrote: [...] > Note: There are all these Halloween documents discussing the OSI > battle-of-words with Microsoft, but I wonder why there is no similar > discussion with IBM? Well, see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl.php http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ibmpl.php and, p

Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?

I am starting to notice a growing number of people who claim that what makes software Open Source is what *copyright* license agreement it is licensed under. This is not in fact the case: a program qualifies as Open Source if the "distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the