Re: IBM Public License (again)
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 10:07:59AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Summary: we are being offered a non-free patent licence which may or
> may not be required, which is a different case to being offered no
> patent licence for no known relevant patents.
It's not clear to me that this patent license is non-free.
* You can deliver this license to anyone.
* The program is distributable in source code.
* You can deliver this license in the context of derived works.
* The license doesn't discrimate against people, groups or fields of
endeavor. [We do not recognize "people wanting to enforce particular
intellectual property claims" as a field of endeavor, or the GPL wouldn't
be free.]
* The rights granted by the license are distributable to anyone.
* The rights are not specific to debian.
* [Near as I can tell] this license does not contaminate other software.
You've made the claim that this license contaminates other software.
However, you can't base that claim on the assertion that the license
is non-free. "Contaminating other software" would make the license
non-free, but the converse is not necessarily true.
--
Raul
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