Alex et al, > I'm a tad confused about the licensing of the Judy code. It is very > nicely LGPL, which to me means I should be able to take the code and > morph it into whatever i'd like, but then I don't understand how the > patent for Judy trees plays into this. Is it preventing > re-implementations of Judy trees, or should I just ignore that the > patent exists?
I think you should mostly ignore that the patents exist (sigh... I was the one who worked with the lawyers to get them done). The patent apps were completed first, by the team while employed by HP, before the project was canceled. Upon project termination, and before early retirement or layoff of the team members, HP decided to release the software under LGPL. Now I am not a lawyer, but I don't see how using the Judy library software under the LGPL can infringe on the patents. Do you? Remember that there's a concept of a "defensive patent," which some entity does in order to ensure they DO have the right to use an invention. (There's also something called "defensive publication" to force an invention into the public domain.) Nothing requires a patent holder to keep that privilege to themselves; they can give it away or license it out. In this case, HP retains the rights to the inventions as disclosed in the patents, but has released those rights subject to LGPL. That's my interpretation. Cheers, Alan Silverstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Judy-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/judy-devel
