Re: Open Software License v2.1

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> For example, imagine a license which said any attempt to sue over

Oops, left part out.  This should say something like:

Imagine a license which is just like the patent-terminating-copyright
license in question, but terminates on any lawsuit over physical
property.  So if you're using my software which is written under this
license, and you sue to get me out of your house or to give back your
car, you lose the rights to the software.

Surely that's not free, no matter how badly I believe property rights
are a great evil -- but I can imagine a world where the
rented-hardware model continued to dominate the industry, and some
here might argue that rejection of that model is necessary for free
software.  The physical-property-entangling license is only obviously
not-free because it's not our crusade, it's from an alternate
universe.

So how is this patent-license business different from a license to use
physical property?  This is still just an attempt to blackmail
pre-existing property rights away from users of your software.  It's
critically different from a copyleft, because there there isn't a
pre-existing property right.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu