Re: [fielding@apache.org: Review of proposed Apache License, version 2.0]

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 11:36:10AM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
> If the lawsuit filed against you has *no* merit, that's true.  But in
> practice, given the current broken state of the American patent law
> system, it's much, much cheaper to countersue and work out a quick
> settlement -- even if both patents on both sides are bullshit -- than
> to slog through the courts.

> This isn't nice, it isn't good, it isn't right -- but it isn't
> Debian's fight, or Apache's, and this isn't the right way to solve it.

But it is.  This is a real problem.

Let's say I own a manufacturing company and I am looking for a solution to
deploy online shopping services -- this is going to be critical to my
business in the future, and a webserver will be a critical part of it.  As a
manufacturer, I own patents on various manufacturing processes that let me
maintain a chance of competing against much larger companies.

Now, let's say that somebody that contributed to Apache (with this type of
patent grant) decides to violate my patent on mouse trap assembly.  I am now
stuck between a rock and a hard place: I can either see my product illegally
copied by someone else, or defend my patent and see my e-commerce suite come
crashing down.  Either way, I'm screwed.

I don't see how you, or anyone else, can possibly claim that this is
acceptable even for proprietary software, much less Free Software.  It
directly violates DFSG's "no discrimination" clause, in that people that
exercise their legal rights are discriminated against.

Now, s/mouse trap/software/ and you have exactly the situation comptemplated
by the license proposal.

I agree that software should not be patentable at all.  But I disagree that
people should be prevented from exercising the same rights as everyone else
just because they run Apache.

If the proposed Apache license becomes DFSG-free, people will no longer be
able to trust that Debian is a Free operating system.  They will now have to
review every legal action taken against any company against all software
they use from Debian (which could be in the thousands) to see if this will
terminate some rights somewhere.  That is ludicrous.


-- John