Ryan Ackley wrote:
Andy,From my point-of-view you are pretty much asking for nothing less than Microsoft to go beyond the OSP for POI. Correct?
Actually not exactly (a patent grant for POI and its derivatives) or to fix the OSP to clarify conformance especially "best effort" conformance (read: bugs) is acceptable.
From a practical standpoint you're asking for Microsoft to re-write the OSP to your satisfaction. Because If they do it for Apache it would pretty much apply to everyone because anyone could just say they're software was derived from POI, therefore it was covered by the new OSP just for POI.
The OSP probably offers no coverage. Even sam said something along the lines that it is at best helpful and probably "harmless". I'm asking for a patent grant that allows us to distribute under the terms of the OSD. (I was earlier confused to believe that the CLA-C offered this coverage, Nick tells me that I'm wrong and while I don't profess to fully get it, I read his explanation and trust him on that issue)
I respect your position. POI is your baby and caution is most definitely warranted when dealing with Microsoft.
POI is not my baby alone, POI is the users and the people that supported it (developers too). It is them that I'm attempting to look out for.
Some facts to consider: I've never heard of a case of Microsoft using their patents offensively. Also, there seems to be a general consensus
I guess you need to read the news a little more often :-). In addition to the most famous issue, Microsoft has used the patent system to harm open source through third parties in the past. Thus far they have primarily aimed at Linux.
in the community that the OSP is "good enough" protection. There are
That is not true either and you missed the doc that Nick posted that explains the problem from a legalistic point of view around "conforms".
several other open source projects that don't seem to be worried about it, including OpenOffice. Finally, anytime a single line of code is committed to an open source project, there is a risk of it infringing some frivolous patent somewhere. It's a sad reality of our IP laws.
A special issue is that Microsoft is contributing through a third party. Which I have NO PROBLEM WITH AT ALL so long as they properly/legally/etc contribute all of the IP that they contribute to the implementation of. There is no reason, in my mind, for them not to give POI a grant for all of the IP they fund the implementation of.
-Andy
-Ryan On 4/16/08, Nick Burch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Andrew C. Oliver wrote:I totally don't get the CLA-C argument.It's a bit subtle, and it took me a little while to understand :) Let us imagine that Acme Corp holds three patents, patent A, patent B and patent C. Acme Corp has a ccla on file, as does its sole employee, Jim, who also has an icla on file. Jim starts contributing to Apache Foo on company time. He writes some code in an area covered by patent A. All users of Apache Foo now have a grant covering patent A. However, they don't have any rights on patents B or C. Now, you are also an Apache Foo contributor. You write commit some code, which is in an area covered by patent B. However, as no Acme Corp employees have worked on that bit of code, there is no grant covering patent B, so we potentially have a problem. We still have a grant on patent A, but nothing for patent C. Jim now submits some patches to your contributions. Now, we do have work from Acme Corp in the area covered by patent B. So, there's now a grant covering patents A and B. However, there's still no grant on patent C. Does that make sense? If we got a ccla from Microsoft tomorrow, it wouldn't make any difference to POI, as Microsoft don't own the copyright on any contributions to POI, so there will be no patent grants. In order to get patent grants under the ccla, we'd need Microsoft to both file a ccla, and have their employees work on POI. This is why many of us feel that the Microsoft ccla issue is a red herring. Do shout if that's still not clear enough, and I'll have another try at explaining it all! Nick --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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