Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge
Lewis Jardine wrote:
> There are, however, standards that are backed by patents and/or
> trademarks, and not freely implementable (postscript, mp3, pdf, etc.),
^^^^^^^^^^
No, trademarks are different. Trademarks are always DFSG-free and don't
cause problems except when certain companies get litigious (they generally
lose when they try to overextend trademark law, but can still cause
problems). Just patents.
> the status of which is a huge can of worms (not helped by software
> patent laws that very from nation to nation). To my knowledge (and this
> is not something I understand very well), Debian's guideline is that a
> program using/implementing a patent-encumbered standard is not allowed
> in main, unless the owner of the patent/trademark promises not to sue
> developers of free software.
Actually, Debian's been operating sort of the opposite way: unless the owner
of the patent shows some sign of enforcing it against software, Debian
assumes that the patent is invalid, or at least invalid when applied to
software, and that it will not be enforced. This is done because there are
so many junk software patents out there (most of which are invalid on their
faces for being obvious, due to prior art, or for being pure mathematics),
and most of them are never enforced.
On the other hand, if the owner of the patent does show some sign of
enforcing it, Debian has been somewhat inconsistent, and I'm not really
sure what the policy is.
--
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Reply to: