Re: [vorlon@netexpress.net: Re: Bug#181969: [mdadams@ece.uvic.ca: Re: JasPer licensing wrt Debian Linux]]

[Michael Adams <mdadams@ece.uvic.ca>]

Dear Martin and Others:

I dislike the notion of software patents just as much as you do,
perhaps even more as they have been causing me a lot of grief with
respect to JasPer.  I am very much in favor of software with no usage
restrictions at all.  In an ideal world, JasPer would have no usage
restrictions imposed by its license.  What I ask is that you please
appreciate the world is far from ideal.  I have received a number of
rather unkind e-mail from some members of the open-source community.
That is, a number of people have been very critical of me for
the compliant-usage clause in the JasPer license.  In this regard, I wish
that people would make a genuine attempt to understand the issues
involved before they attack me for being an unfair/unkind person.

First of all, I am not the sole owner of the JasPer software.  I am
only a partial copyright holder along with the other JasPer
Contributors.  More specifically, JasPer is co-owned by the following
parties:
    1) Image Power, Inc.
    2) University of British Columbia
    3) Michael Adams
As a result, the terms of the JasPer license cannot be dictated by me alone.
The license and any revisions must be made with the approval of all of
the above parties.  Consequently, I was only able to provide input to
the license drafting process, but I could not dictate the terms of the
license myself.

Second, and more importantly, there is a critical legal issue involved
here.  In fact, it is for this reason that all of the JasPer
Contributors agreed that the compliant-usage clause was necessary.  The
troublesome issue is this:  The JasPer Contributors might be held
liable for the patent-infringing use of the JasPer software by
*others*.  This is a very serious concern.  This is, in fact, the
primary reason why the license imposes the compliant-usage restriction.
That is, this clause in the license serves to protect the JasPer
Contributors (e.g., from lawsuits claiming contributory infringement or
something similar).

Sincerely,
Michael Adams

---
Michael Adams, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, CANADA
Tel: +1 250 721 6025, Fax: +1 250 721 6052, Office: EOW 403
E-mail: mdadams@ece.uvic.ca, Web: www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams