Re: Open Software License v2.1
Andrew Suffield writes:
> Long-standing conclusions, summarised:
>
> Terminating licenses (copyright, patent, trademark, dog-humping, or
> whatever else might interfere with distribution/modification/use) for
> any reason other than non-compliance is a bit of legal insanity to get
> contract-like provisions into a license. These provisions have to be
> considered like any other restriction (invert the sense of the
> conditional to get the restriction).
>
> Anything that requires a contract-like construct, rather than a simple
> license, is probably non-free. DFSG-free licenses give things to the
> licensee, not to the copyright holder. They are not a trade (although
> the grant of permissions does not have to be the most generous
> possible), even if their social behaviour resembles one.
>
> (Corollary of these two: terminating a license for any reason other
> than non-compliance is probably non-free)
Other corollary: Claiming something is a "contract-like provision" is
a useful wedge to make something like the GPL a non-free license.
On the other hand, I always thought free software was about protecting
users, not patent litigants who are supposed to already have working
forms of the patented invention.
> A restriction saying "You may not sue me for patent issues" is
> non-free.
If any licenses said that, it might be relevant.
> Patent licenses are ignored unless there are actively enforced
> patents. In almost every case where we come across these patent
> clauses, there are no actively enforced patents, so we simply ignore
> them - but sometimes people write clauses like this one, which remain
> non-free in the absence of patents.
If the patent licenses are ignored unless actively enforced, do you
have a problem with the Apache License 2.0, in which only the patent
license terminates in the event of patent litigation?
Michael Poole
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