On 2004-05-13 18:09:47 +0100 Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
MJ Ray wrote:
Why should this software's licence, not directly involved in the
cases
above, terminate?
This software's license doesn't terminate. The patent license from
all
of the software's contributors not to sue you over patents terminates.
I already wrote I'm only considering the patent licence, so let's drop
the wording defence. We agree that the patent licence terminates.
Therefore, the patent licence is non-free.
A license that gives no indication about patents at all would give you
fewer rights than this license
Sure, but a patent licence might not be needed because there are no
patents covering the software. If there are patents covering it, then
having no patent licence => non-free.
Can we reasonably expect that anyone licensing us some patents in
order to use their software has such patents? If not, why don't they
declare that instead of licensing a nothing to us?
Given that our standard position on patents is to ignore them unless a
particular patent holder is threatening us with lawsuits, I see no
reason why we shouldn't apply the same policy here.
Our standard position on patents is usually for the case where we have
no patent licence and don't know that we require one. This is a case
where we are being offered a non-free patent licence and a free
copyright licence. Why aren't these two seperate licences? Then we
would know whether we require a patent licence by whether it is
offered, which would make it easier to spot software non-free for
swpat lands ;-)
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing