Christian Hudon wrote: > IMNSHO it'd be rather pointless to release the > code of the reference implementation under the GPL but have it unusable > because it's encumbered by patents, so hopefully they thought of that > too. There was a discussion of this sort of question on the Ogg Vorbis list a few months ago. We asked Richard Stallman for his opinion of what would happen if someone had a patent for some algorithm, but released source code for an implementation of that algorithm under the GPL. Here is the crucial part of RMS's response: "... our lawyer recently told me that any patent holder that releases a GPL-covered program which the patent covers is implicitly licensing the patent for that use." (RMS, 18 October 2001, email to jack@xiph.org, cc: vorbis@xiph.org) In other words (this is my interpretation of RMS's words), you could use the GPL'd code in accordance with the GPL, but you could not independently implement the algorithm, nor use the code in a non-GPL context. Now, just to be clear, this is quite different from the case where someone releases a program under GPL that is covered by a third party's patent (e.g. if a patent holder grants you a non-transferable license to use his algorithm in your program, and you then release your code under GPL). RMS addressed this question too, saying, "In that case, since you can't distribute the complete source code without violating your patent license, and you can't distribute incomplete source or binary-only without violating the GPL, in effect you cannot distribute the program at all." (RMS, 20 October 2001, email to jack@xiph.org, cc: vorbis@xiph.org) Craig
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