Re: Please Review: Official IBM Public License
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> In my reading, the DFSG does not concern itself with hypothetical
> patent licenses. No declaration from a free software author can
> guarantee that there'll never be patent problems, so if the DFSG
> were to require such guarantee Debian would suddenly fit nicely
> on one floppy disk with room to spare.
Right.
On the other hand, when an author has asked us not to distribute some
piece of software, we've not distributed it. This is basic politeness
if nothing else (and, aside from the KDE case and a time when some
alpha software began to achieve wide use without any official notice,
it's been a fairly noncontroversial issue).
I think that this would also apply if the author holds a patent license
that the author won't grant us rights to -- at least, it would if we're
properly informed of that situation.
--
Raul
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