Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 04:08:37PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> Why are we concerned about people who patent pieces of software while
>> claiming that they'll only use these patents defensively?
>
> You cannot reject a user because you don't like them for some reason,
> and say that they do not deserve the same freedoms as everybody else
> and therefore it doesn't matter that the software isn't free for them.
The GPL rejects users who want to distribute binaries without source.
The MPL rejects users who want to sue the licensor for infringement of
patents connected to the software. Why do you believe that one of these
cases is significantly different to the other?
> That's the sort of thing we're trying to *stop*.
We're 19 years too late for that.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.project@srcf.ucam.org
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