Re: Cisco EIGRP patent licence and the GPLv2 licence

[Walter Landry <wlandry@caltech.edu>]

Paul Jakma <paul@jakma.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a question I have not been able to get a conclusion to,
> regarding the compatibility of the licence Cisco have given to their
> EIGRP patents, by way of their declaration under the IETF "IPR"
> process. That declaration being:
> 
>   https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/2236/
> 
> The relevant grant/licence text being:
> 
>  "For any claims of any Cisco patents that are necessary for practicing
>   the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol specification
>   <draft-savage-eigrp-01>, any party will have the right to use any such
>   patent claims under reasonable, non-discriminatory terms, with
>   reciprocity, to implement and fully comply with the specification.

This means that Cisco's patent grant only applies if you are
implementing EIGRP.  So that feels incompatibile.

With that said, the usual approach that Debian follows is that if the
patent is not being actively enforced, Debian does not worry about
them.  Otherwise, Debian would not be able to ship anything.  Since
you claim later

> What I've gotten from those exchanges suggests there is little reason
> to be concerned about the Cisco patent or the licence.

then it would be fine for Debian.

Note that I am not the decider.  The Debian FTP masters are the final
arbiters.  They are extremely busy, so they rely on this list to sort
out the easy cases.  The only way to get a definitive ruling from the
FTP masters is to create and submit a package.  I am a random person
who has been following the debian-legal mailing list for some time, so
I think I have a sense of what the FTP masters are thinking.  YMMV.

Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlandry@caltech.edu