Re: Patent clauses in licenses

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Of the opinions expressed so far (I'm taking into account views
expressed on Planet Debian as well), there seems to be a narrow majority
who believe that licenses which terminate if you allege infringement of
a software patent in that software should be free. Is there anyone who
hasn't expressed a view who feels otherwise?

The situation seems less clear regarding licenses which terminate if you
allege infringement of a software patent in other software. These do
sound somewhat broader. 

The first sort of these merely terminates your patent license. It could
be argued that this simply turns the license into one which is
equivilent to something like the BSD license, which doesn't grant any
patent rights in the first place. In that case, current behaviour would
suggest that we would only consider this non-free if we believe that
those patents will be actively enforced.

The second sort of these terminates your copyright license to software
unrelated to your suit. How do people feel about that?

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.project@srcf.ucam.org