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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')



On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 02:57:21AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:

> Start with something uncontroversial and then build to:
> 
> [...]
> > >     In the light of the threat that software patents pose to Free
> > >     Software, we believe that it is likewise acceptable for software
> > >     licenses to place conditions on the use of software patents
> > >     against Free Software authors and distributors.
> 
> ...trying to get "pet a cat"-style conditions allowed through!
> 
> Sorry, but I don't think I can support the suggestion that licenses
> that die on actions not related to the covered work are reasonable,
> let alone agreeing with the DFSG.

Damn. Still being misuderstood. The intention of that paragraph was not
to allow arbitrary restrictions, but rather to indicate that perhaps we
do believe that *some* (as yet unspecified, but soon to be specified)
restrictions are acceptable.

I was originally going to add another paragraph on the end, of the form:

    The types of restriction that we believe are acceptable are as
    follows:
        * <blah>
        * <blah>
        * <blah>

With blah, blah and blah to be discussed if and when it appeared that
we agreed on the fact that *some* restrictions would be acceptable.

But then I thought that that paragraph was ugly and unnecessary, so I
removed it... *shrug*

So the question I was trying to ask was "do we believe that there are
*any* restrictions which would be acceptable?" -- with the intention that
if/when the answer turned out to be "yes", then we could discuss precisely
which restrictions they would be.

It appears that so far, the answer is indeed "yes". But I'd like to see
a few more responses before I try to come up with some possible sets of
restrictions (although thanks Josh for suggesting such a set already).



Cheers,


Nick



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