Re: Open Software License v2.1
Scripsit Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>
> 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.
> > 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.
I don't see what you're getting at here? Could you spell out what it
is that who could do anyway in the absense of your proposed clause?
> > 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.
No. The original author means whoever wrote the code in question. That
it completely orthogonal to whom the patent system considers to have
"invented" the "patentable" technique in question.
> 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.
You seem to have a quite wrong idea about what patents are an what
they can do. Patents say that if Mark gets an idea Monday and files
for a patent Tuesday, then Mark can *succesfully* demand royalies from
Luke who *independently*, not knowing about Mark's work, got the same
idea on Wednesday.
> 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.
It's not about a penalty for bringing law case. It's about preventing
patent owners from gaining a monopoly on code that somebody else wrote
with the purpose of it being free.
It's not a complete defense, by the way - a smart patent owner would
just try to sue everybody else *but* the copyright holder who uses the
code instead.
--
Henning Makholm "Jeg forstår mig på at anvende sådanne midler på
folks legemer, at jeg kan varme eller afkøle dem,
som jeg vil, og få dem til at kaste op, hvis det er det,
jeg vil, eller give afføring og meget andet af den slags."
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