Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Hi,
I do not want to try to decide whether the FSF oder the OSI consider such
licenses as free or non-free. I also do not know whether such Clauses are
covered by the DFSG. I just want to list a few Reasons why I consider such
licenses as strictly non-free and would prefer Debian to consider the same
and give a few example to describe my position.
Such a clause excludes certain (or more likely undefinded) person
subgroups from the rights all other user get for this software. Not per
default, but after a certain action of the user, but the software
restricts its use to certain person subgroups. That seems to me very
arbitrary.
One might say that is immoral to engage a patent action against a free
software author, but immoral behaviour can be no reason to forbid the use
of a free software, because that would make the software non-free.
An example for this might be a license that forbids the use of the
software for the production or use of weapons of mass destruction. While
this may be morally legal it is definitively non-free. (In Fact to
download the Plan9 OS you must agree to a similar clause. It is not part
of the software, but you have to agree to it to download it. See [1].)
Such a passus also is no legal protection against patent lawsuits. The
fact that one uses the software or not has no impact on whether he would
sue the author of the software.
I would call such a passus very arbitrary Selection of the users. Like
someone would prohibit using the software if you get divorsed. (One might
say the in the case of patent lawsuits the author gets a real monetary
harm, which is not the case here, but see again the example of the weapons
of mass destruction from which the author could also get possibly harmed
by.)
I also see a big problem for the Debian project here if it decides to
consider such licenses as free. For exampe a company XYZ. This company
holds several patents, that it of course enforces. This company uses
Debian (only the main tree) on its computer to be sure to have the right
to use all of the contained software without verifying each software
license in detail. Then one time it happens that this company sues an
application developer that is also the developer of a software this
company uses and has such a license (to make this example more realistic
you could imagine that the author of the Software is IBM...). Now the
license of the software would get invalid for XYZ. XYZ and other companies
could not trust the classification of Debian anymore, because not in call
cases it is assured that the user has the right to use use the software.
[1] - http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/download.html
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