IMHO, everything can be hell or haven, including LGPL. It depends on
one's motivations and intentions. For patents, lawyers are the tools of
the owners, so what happens depends on the owners (except the patent
officers, but they infringe only the owners). I agree also many patents
are abusive and shaming.
That's why I am also against patents on software. But it is not that
simple. Software is just a tool. Many technologies need software to come
to life but are not intrinsically software. Then patents may be IMHO
legitimate. When you spend thousands of hours to develop an innovative
technology, you can expect earning some money with it, at least to feed
your children, isn't it ?
Open source and associated consulting and expertise is a great
economical model, but not the only one. Moreover, it fits some people,
and not others. Other people are creative and technology centric. For
them, the patent may be the less bad idea, even if many times it is
finaly a real bad idea because filing a patent requires that you have
funds to defend it. But it may also be a good idea, especially if your
invention needs to be opened, or once again, the less bad idea. Many
corporates are unfair, isn't it ? The guy who invented car wipers had to
fight all his life to obtain the first dollar from his invention.
When it comes to technical innovation, when you want to keep your
freedom in a small business, when you want to spend your time in
creation more than in service, what do you propose ?
Of course, you cannot answer: consulting is great, make your technology
free, raise a community, do expertise and be happy. That would be just
what fits to some people, but not others. Besides, if the technology is
simple to use, nobody will need your expertise.
One may also hire a few people to do the consulting, and stay on the
creation, but then you have to spend most of your time in management,
what is creativity counter productive. You can also hire a CE, but then
you may have other kind of troubles.
You may also just stay an employee in a corporate with a cool R&D.
There is no legitimate reason to prevent anyone to get freedom and to
be, behave and work as he is, as far as the freedom and dignity of
everyone else is respected and preserved.
My 2 cts.
Laurent Alebarde
Le 30/01/2014 14:00, Pieter Hintjens a écrit :
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Sojan James <[email protected]> wrote:
I think zeromq is a great library to use for my project. At my company, all
open source usage needs to be approved for use by a legal team. Usage of
GLPv3 and LGPLv3 is flatly refused. One of the reasons is the clause about
the patents. I don't fully understand the implications of the patent clause
of LGPLv3 w.r.t zeromq. Does the static linking exception affect my
obligations in any way?
I'm basically looking for any information that I can provide to the legal
team to discuss further if an exception can be granted for this library.
The patent clause in the LGPLv3 applies to anyone using ZeroMQ, no
matter how they link it. This is deliberate. The goal is to reduce
patent lawsuits around ZeroMQ. You can read the full implications
elsewhere; it's standard part of GPLv3. Any firm that flatly refuses
(L)GPLv3 for these reasons is welcome to go buy commercial software,
or use other products.
Speaking personally, (software) patents are an infectious abomination
that allow pseudo-lawyers to parasite the work of productive people.
Firms do make the choice: either they embrace that abomination or they
reject it. If they embrace it, they are dangerous partners and
unreliable contributors. The LGPLv3 patent clause makes a good filter
to ensure such firms do not join our community. /End of personal
statement
-Pieter
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