Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free

[Jim Marhaus <marhaus@sdf.lonestar.org>]

Edmund wrote:
 
> Hasn't this been rebutted by people pointing out that many or most
> free software licences don't include any patent licence at all, so
> including a restricted patent licence is hardly any worse?

The FSF claims free licenses like the GPL carry an implied patent license. This
is in part why licenses with patent termination clauses (eg ASL) are
incompatible with the GPL:

http://www.apache.de/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html

If you accept this argument, then yes the MPL's restrictive explicit patent
license is less free than no patent license at all, because it removes the
implied patent license.

-Jim