Re: Cisco EIGRP patent licence and the GPLv2 licence
On Tue, 4 Jul 2017, Walter Landry wrote:
"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
It's hard to know. Cisco do have a history of initiating patent
enforcement actions though. E.g.:
https://blogs.cisco.com/news/protecting-innovation-itc-945-initial-determination
How much that would concern one would depend on one's situation.
Personally, I don't have an issue with that style of licence cause it
only limits those who want to sue over patents. Which seems fine to me.
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.
That's on the concern about the patent and its licence. Which is where
most people I've talked to stop the analysis. However, the concern
that's been raised is on the other side.
The concern raised is about the /copyright/ holders in the other GPLv2+
licensed code, on which the EIGRP GPLv2 code depends. The concern is
those other copyright holders could object that the EIGRP code that
depends on their code is patent encumbered, with potential royalties,
and hence incompatible with the licence they gave on the use of their
code.
At a practical level, are those concerns founded, and what degree of
caution on such concerns is warranted? Both in terms of reasonable
protection against hostile copyright holders (e.g. SCO situations where
copyrights fall into wrong hands) and deference to the wishes of
friendly copyright holders who object to patent encumberances; but
without unreasonably restricting others' ability to distribute code they
have written?
(On whether concerns are founded: The brief informal legal advice I've
had seemed to suggest maybe - your reply above seems to too; what I
can't get clarity on is that issue of the reasonable degree of caution,
and the appropriate balance between different interests).
regards,
--
Paul Jakma | paul@jakma.org | @pjakma | Key ID: 0xD86BF79464A2FF6A
Fortune:
If you don't have time to do it right, where are you going to find the time
to do it over?
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