Re: Patent clauses in licenses

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Thomas Hood writes:

> The restrictions in the GPL are of a different kind.  They limit what the
> licensee can do _with_the_program_.  (Viz., the licensee cannot
> redistribute the program without providing source code, etc.)  These are
> not restrictions on what the licensee could have done had she not received
> the program.  We have to keep this distinction in mind, I think.

None of the patent clauses prevent people from doing things they could
have done had they not received the program, since none of them try to
enforce a waiver on the licensee.

Michael Poole