On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 12:15:24PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: > In the world of proprietary software, the copyright holders of that > software often have large numbers of software patents with which to > defend themselves. Free Software developers, as you said, do not > normally have software patents. I believe the entire point of these > license clauses is to provide a way for Free Software developers to have > the equivalent protections, using something they *do* have: the > copyrights on their Free Software products. This is actually an even > better form of "protection", because it allows Free Software developers > to reject the idea of software patents by not holding any, while still > defending themselves from those of others. This idea is a variation on "You may not use this software for military applications" and goes against DFSG#5/#6. They're both intrinsically non-free, no matter how laudable you may consider them to be. You cannot use a license to enforce your political position. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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