Quoting VanL ([email protected]): > Open source only reflects permission from the licensor (or in some cases, > the direct distributor) to exercise otherwise-exclusive IP rights. The > whole "no warranties" part of open source licensing is precisely to deal > with the unknowability of potential infringement claims.
Quite so. Of course, warranty disclaimers, even all those exhaustive ones in all caps to guarantee that U.C.C.'s requirement of them being 'conspicuous'[1], are toothless against patent infringement. Otherwise, there wouldn't be elaborate attempts at patent-peace enforcement, attempts at defensive patent pools, and all the similar stuff we-all have been talking about for twenty years or so (not counting pre-OSI discussion). I don't _think_ that point is under debate. If you've seen a warranty disclaimer you think has any power against patent transgression, please show. Likewise, I imagine there are many other legal complications external to the code and its covering licence statement that might impair exercise of rights necessary to a work substantively being open source. (I'm blanking on other examples, at this exact moment, which would be a problem if I were a 1L bright boy, but fortunately I'm just a legal-curious sysadmin.) > So, the codec is still open source, but there is still the > newly-appreciated potential of infringement claims by a third party. We may be talking at cross-purposes. If so, my apologies. My own view is that if the codec's open source licence permission grant is curtailed by external agency, e.g., by need to pay royalties on a newly revealed patent, then by a function defintion, it's prevented from being open source. More pithily, if a codebase cannot clear the OSD#1 hurdle (because royalties), then it's not OSD-compliant. Obviously, I'm very far from insisting others must share my view. I'm just trying to make sure I'm being clear (if only on account of jetlag concerns). > It is possible that under certain licenses (e.g. GPLv2) that the > distributor might need to stop distributing, or identify particular > jurisdictions in which it can be distributed, but that doesn't change its > open source status. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but what you say doesn't change is exactly what I said does, as to use in those circumstances. (Horses for courses, though. As Flanders and Swann put it, IIRC, everyone gets his own gout.) [1] § 1-201(b)(10), https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-201 § 2-316(2), https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-316 -- Cheers, "I am a member of a civilization (IAAMOAC). Step back Rick Moen from anger. Study how awful our ancestors had it, yet [email protected] they struggled to get you here. Repay them by appreciating McQ! (4x80) the civilization you inherited." -- David Brin _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
