Question about Facebook's Osquery: Additional Grant of Patent Rights
Hi,
Facebook has published what seems a nice piece of code called osquery
under a BSD3 license [1] [2] [3]. I was surprised by an "Additional
Grant of Patent Rights" document that says the following [4]:
Additional Grant of Patent Rights
"Software" means the osquery software distributed by Facebook, Inc.
Facebook hereby grants you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive,
irrevocable (subject to the termination provision below) license under any
rights in any patent claims owned by Facebook, to make, have made, use, sell,
offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Software. For avoidance of
doubt, no license is granted under Facebook’s rights in any patent claims that
are infringed by (i) modifications to the Software made by you or a third party,
or (ii) the Software in combination with any software or other technology
provided by you or a third party.
The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice,
for anyone that makes any claim (including by filing any lawsuit, assertion or
other action) alleging (a) direct, indirect, or contributory infringement or
inducement to infringe any patent: (i) by Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or
affiliates, whether or not such claim is related to the Software, (ii) by any
party if such claim arises in whole or in part from any software, product or
service of Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates, whether or not
such claim is related to the Software, or (iii) by any party relating to the
Software; or (b) that any right in any patent claim of Facebook is invalid or
unenforceable.
I'm talking about the part "whether or not such claim is related to
the Software". The license is obviously free (BSD3), but I wonder this
"patent license" can affect, in practice, DFSG freedoms. I'd like to
know what other think about it.
Thanks,
Miry
[1] https://code.facebook.com/posts/844436395567983/introducing-osquery/
[2] https://github.com/facebook/osquery
[3] https://github.com/facebook/osquery/blob/master/LICENSE
[4] https://github.com/facebook/osquery/blob/master/PATENTS
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