Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The reality is that we do *not* require authors to extend us a license to > patents as part of their software license in order to consider it free. We > merely opt not to distribute software that's covered by patents that are > actively being enforced. The current patent regime is sufficiently broken, > and so much inanely trivial activity is covered by patents, that *asking* > people for patent licenses really is a slippery slope that we don't want to > start down.
I think there are more points on this spectrum than you imply. For example, we currently treat as free those who distribute software covered by patents but ignore them -- their own patents or those of others. We do *not* treat as free software covered by actively enforced patents, those that are not ignored. This is perhaps something in between: someone who doesn't ignore patents, who does enforce them, but who claims to have a free way of doing so. We would not accept that way as free if applied to copyrights -- a license that said "BSD, but if you sue any copyright holder for copyright infringement you lose all rights" would not be Free. In general, I think these booby-trap clauses are bad policy. In specific, I think either the software was free without them or it cannot be free with them. We would not normally regard software containing a technique covered by an enforced patent as free. So this isn't free. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]