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Re: IBM Public License (again)



@ 14/05/2004 07:03 : wrote Raul Miller :

On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 10:07:59AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
"We insist that licenses be perpetual unless terminated for non-compliance" Branden Robinson during the LaTeX discussions http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/08/msg00108.html -- Now, the IBM patent licence terminates if you don't comply with conditions on other software. Why is that not contaminating?

That's an example of terminating for non-compliance.  An example of
termination without non-compliance would be where a license is
terminated
after five years.
You are ignoring the _on_ _other_ _software_ part: "the IBM patent license terminates if you don't comply with conditions ON OTHER SOFTWARE". This is undoubtely contamination, and is prohibited by the DFSG#9

Then why would suing IBM over patent license violations matter for
free software?
You lost me for this one. Who is suing IBM over patent license? (IMHO the person would have to be certifiably insane to do that, but...)

Legalistic licensors covering all their bases, or companies that
hold
so many patents that it would be difficult to search them all to determine what to license.
It seems unfair to put the burden of discovering what has been licensed on the distributors and users. Does anyone know how a court would handle this?

In the U.S., it's roughly the case that the defendant in patent
litigation
is presumed guilty until proven innocent.
?!


--
br,M



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