Re: Bug#837666: Fwd: Bug#837666: udunits: license change
Thank you for raising this issue.
Alastair McKinstry <mckinstry@debian.org> writes:
> As indicated below, the license on a package I maintain has changed,
> adding a new clause to the 3-clause BSD license.
(Hence making this license *not* a BSD license as commonly understood.)
> Can debian-legal please review and comment on the clause:
>
> 4) This license shall terminate automatically and you may no longer
> exercise any of the rights granted to you by this license as of
> the date you commence an action, including a cross-claim or
> counterclaim, against the copyright holder or any contributor
> alleging that this software infringes a patent. This termination
> provision shall not apply for an action alleging patent
> infringement by combinations of this software with other
> software or hardware.
Such a clause is IMO a restriction on the free redistribution of the
work: it retroactively revokes the grant of copyright license to the
recipient, based not on any violation of copyright.
For comparison, the GPLv3 and Artistic v2 license conditions deal with
patents by granting *more* freedom, not less. They each explicitly grant
to the recipient freedom from restrictions by patents in the work held
by its copyright holders.
By contrast, this custom license is a poor idea and may be non-free,
because it's difficult to make “license can be revoked retroactively”
free.
You could recommend to the copyright holder that if they want to protect
recipients against patent action, they should instead grant license
under the Apache or GNU GPL license terms which are already well-known
to result in free works.
--
\ “… correct code is great, code that crashes could use |
`\ improvement, but incorrect code that doesn’t crash is a |
_o__) horrible nightmare.” —Chris Smith, 2008-08-22 |
Ben Finney
Reply to: