On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 11:12:04PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > Scripsit Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> > > On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 02:55:56PM +1300, Adam Warner wrote: > > > > No sane company will ever grant a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, > > > fully paid-up and royalty free patent licence without a reciprocity > > > clause. > > > No sane company will ever grant a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, > > fully paid-up and royalty free copyright license without a reciprocity > > clause. > > There's the difference that it takes explicit action and quite a bit > of money to acquire and keep holding a patent. Going through that > trouble just to grant the public a perpetual, non-exclusive, > worldwide, fully paid-up and royalty free patent licence without a > reciprocity clause would be senseless. An easier way to achieve the > same legal result would be not to take out a patent at all. > > On the other hand, copyright springs into being automatically. It > makes sense for somebody who have accidentally become bestowed with a > copyright to explicitly license it to the general public under free > terms, if he wants to create a situation reminiscent of the one where > he does not have a copyright. Are you attempting to suggest that a "sane company" doesn't want to hold copyright in the software they create? I don't find that likely. Your argument doesn't seem relevant to the subject at hand. The argument proposed was attempting to say "No company is ever going to grant free patent licenses"; I pointed out the argument applies equally to software (it's the same one that proprietary software advocates have been making for about 20 years, claiming that free software can't work), and companies *do* grant free software licenses. They can grant free patent licenses for the same reasons. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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