Re: Open Software License v2.1
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
> Scripsit Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>
>
>> PS You know, I just thought of something. If these clauses cancelled
>> the copyright license to *everybody* as soon as *anybody* *wins* a
>> patent lawsuit over the software, I wouldn't mind them so much.
>
> That would spectacularly fail the tentacles-of-evil test.
>
> If the author, Foobar Ltd. happens to be acquired by Evil Megacorp,
> E.M. could have one of their other subsidiaries sue Foobar for with a
> claim that their xor-cursor patent is violated, and deliberately let
> Foobar put up no competent defense at all in court. Poof, everybody's
> copyright license is gone.
But as Poole and others have argued here, if something is less than
perfectly free for any reason, non-freeness of any other sort matters
not. Applied here, that means your example doesn't matter because
they could do it anyway, by simply buying the patent and threatening
suit.
>> It's the cancellation of the license for even seeking impartial
>> justice that bothers me.
>
> The situation the clause aims at is one where a patent owner seeks to
> gain a monopoly on the original author's work by preventing everybody
> else - including the original author himself - from using it.
Your use of the term "original author" is misapplied. Either the
copyright owner is not the original author, because the patent
predates his work, or he is the original author and can win the suit
easily.
> I don't think "justice", impartial or not, has anything to do with
> that. My intuition is that it is fair for free software to say, "if
> you want to have a monopoly on implementations of your patented
> gadget, you have to write the code yourself".
Similarly, I think it's fair to say that Free Software licenses
should not attempt to circumvent the courts, and that penalties for
bringing law cases belong only in negotiated contracts.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
Reply to: