Re: review of DK and IIM patent licenses
MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> I have not read the patents, so I have no idea what these apply to and I
> suspect it's better that I shouldn't know.
>
> Daniel Quinlan <quinlan@pathname.com> wrote:
>> Here is the IIM license:
>> http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-fenton-identified-mail-00.txt
>
> This contaminates other software, by terminating for any patent action
> against Cisco about anything. It even seems to contaminate hardware!
Note that it only terminates the patent license, which just takes us
back to the default state of having no patent license to start with.
>> Here is the DK license:
>> http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net/license/patentlicense1-0.html
>
> "You agree not to assert against Yahoo!, or any other DomainKeys
> Developer, a patent infringement claim against any Implementation
> ("Implementation IP Claim")." To avoid contaminating other software,
> should that read "this Implementation and derived Implementations"
> or similar?
Same here.
It's always possible to refuse to accept the patent license, so it
should never affect your ability to use the software. In the absence of
actively enforced patents, I can see no way that the terms of a patent
license should affect the freeness of the software.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
Reply to: