Nathanael Nerode wrote: > (Wait. I thought of a case: suppose the patent license requires > a statement of credit -- and that's considered free -- and joe-rsa doesn't > contain the credit statement. Then the RSA patent holders would sue to > enforce their free patent license, and lose their free copyright > license.... hmm, that could actually be a problem). That's merely a statement that licenses can be incompatible; the same issue arises when attempting to combine code under different copyleft licenses. In any case, you are attempting to force a piece of Free Software to include an additional restriction; therefore, you should not be able to distribute the software. The GPL would have basically the same effect as well: even if suing did not remove your permission to distribute, you could not distribute the software with a requirement to include the credit clause added to the license. > Suppose instead that the RSA patent holders hold only illegitimate patents. > Then the patent-retaliation clause is very clearly in the best interests of > free software, and the license is Free. Agreed. > In other words, the patent-retaliation clause only imposes a burden in the > cases where > (a) the work is already non-free for other reasons > or > (b) the people being burdened are being abusive > (Barring the case I just thought of above, which might be an actual > problem.) > > Accordingly, it is acceptable in a free license, no? I agree with this analysis. (I also believe that your case of software covered by "a legitimate patent" is the empty set, assuming a distinction between legitimate and legal, but nevertheless, the analysis holds.) - Josh Triplett
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