MJ Ray wrote:Why should this software's licence, not directly involved in the casesThis software's license doesn't terminate. The patent license from allabove, terminate?of the software's contributors not to sue you over patents terminates.
I already wrote I'm only considering the patent licence, so let's drop the wording defence. We agree that the patent licence terminates. Therefore, the patent licence is non-free.
A license that gives no indication about patents at all would give you fewer rights than this license
Sure, but a patent licence might not be needed because there are no patents covering the software. If there are patents covering it, then having no patent licence => non-free.
Can we reasonably expect that anyone licensing us some patents in order to use their software has such patents? If not, why don't they declare that instead of licensing a nothing to us?
Given that our standard position on patents is to ignore them unless a particular patent holder is threatening us with lawsuits, I see no reason why we shouldn't apply the same policy here.
Our standard position on patents is usually for the case where we have no patent licence and don't know that we require one. This is a case where we are being offered a non-free patent licence and a free copyright licence. Why aren't these two seperate licences? Then we would know whether we require a patent licence by whether it is offered, which would make it easier to spot software non-free for swpat lands ;-)
-- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing