At 11:14 AM 2/23/00 -0500, Russell Nelson wrote:
>lcs Mixmaster Remailer writes:
> > Have their been other open source projects which used patented technology
> > owned by the company releasing the source? How has the licensing been
> > handled in those cases?
>
>Basically, "You get a license for this patented algorithm only if you
>use this source code." Details are at http://opensource.org/licenses/
The general policy isn't that simple.
Under MPL 1.0, for example, a contributor can submit open-source that
is subject to third-party patents. All that is required is notification,
and this
is of course limited by the extent of the contributor's knowledge.
In this regard, open source is more like a standards body policy, where
submitters must tell what they know, only about what they submit,
and provide some fair usability assurances in light of that.
-- dpj
