Re: DFSG-freeness of Apache Software Licenses
Anthony DeRobertis <asd@suespammers.org> writes:
> On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 14:02, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>
> > The act of running the Program is not restricted by the proposed Apache
> > license either. We don't need to list all of the things that are not
> > restricted by the license.
>
> It is if your patent license is revoked.
Software that is licensed to you under the GPL, for which you
subsequently use in a patent-infringing way, is no different
in this regard. You are not free use GPL software to violate
the law, not even if you refuse to accept its terms.
My interpretation of the FSF's comments on the license@ list
are that, in their view, a GPL-v2 licensor _implicitly_
forfeits any patent claims that would apply to the licensed
software. However, that fact alone does not imply the proposed
license is _incompatible_ with the GPL-v2: an author of a
derivative work may be willing to forfeit such patent claims
without insisting that the authors of the original work forfeit
theirs also.
FWIW, I personally don't give a damn about the ASF adopting a
license which does not _guarantee_ DFSG-freeness. However, I
do care if it the license makes it impossible to comply, and
I find comments along those lines to be far more persuasive.
--
Joe Schaefer
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