Re: Are future versions of OpenSSL going to be less free?

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 11:04:29AM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>   * In addition, Sun covenants to all licensees who provide a reciprocal
>    * covenant with respect to their own patents if any, not to sue under
>    * current and future patent claims necessarily infringed by the making,
>    * using, practicing, selling, offering for sale and/or otherwise
>    * disposing of the ECC Code as delivered hereunder (or portions thereof),
>    * provided that such covenant shall not apply:
>    *  1) for code that a licensee deletes from the ECC Code;
>    *  2) separates from the ECC Code; or
>    *  3) for infringements caused by:
>    *       i) the modification of the ECC Code or
>    *      ii) the combination of the ECC Code with other software or
>    *          devices where such combination causes the infringement.
>    *
> 
> Which has the sue Sun bit in there, but also says that Sun can sue you
> if you
> * use any of Sun's IP contained in the code outside of this code (ie
>   reuse it in another project)
> * modify any of the ECC code
> 
> Which would definitely make it non-free.

It doesn't say they can sue for copyright infringement though, but for
patent infringement.  Does Sun have actual patents on these algorithms
or are they just covering their asses?

It looks to me like this is a promise over and above the license on
the code.  It doesn't take away any rights the licensee would otherwise
have had, it just gives something extra under certain conditions.
Would the license be Free if this entire clause was left out?

-- 
Richard Braakman
"I sense a disturbance in the force"
"As though millions of voices cried out, and ran apt-get."
  (Anthony Towns about the Debian 3.0 release)