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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')



On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 11:41:31PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:17:34PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> > > Requiring that distributors of a piece of software refrain from making
> > > accusations of patent infringement regarding the software itself is
> > > consistent with the goal of upholding the freedoms of users over that
> > > software.  As such, we consider license condititions acceptable that
> > > terminate a licensee's rights to the software if that licensee raises a
> > > patent lawsuit claiming that the software in question infringes their
> > > patent(s).

> > Agree with this, though for clarity I would say "their own patent(s)" for
> > this last.

> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:56:16PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> > My answer, so far, is "I have yet to see such a restriction that I think
> > should be acceptable."
> ...
> > I don't see anything to qualitatively differentiate petting a cat if you
> > distribute the software, to giving up your rights to unrelated patents if
> > you distribute the software.

> I'm not sure I understand where you're at now. Earlier, you seemed to
> agree with the kind of restriction that Josh mentioned.

Matthew Garrett's subsequent message pinpoints where I am with this:
terminating patent licenses in response to patent claims is fine, requiring
distributors to allow royalty-free distribution if they're going to engage
in distribution at all (as in the GPL) is fine, but terminating copyright
licenses in response to defense of one's patent rights is not ok.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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