Oooops :). Ignore the empty email. Why does who holds the patent matter in this case? If a patent exists and you don't have a patent grant actually precludes distribution of code it would apply regardless of who owns it right?
If the existence of a patent doesn't preclude distribution then it doesn't violate the OSD. So a patent grant by the contributor only protects in a very small fraction of cases. It doesn't even protect against bad actors intending to submarine patents because they could simply sell those patents to a separate legal entity that acts as a patent troll before they do a FOSS release. From: Christopher Sean Morrison <brl...@mac.com<mailto:brl...@mac.com>> Date: Tuesday, Mar 07, 2017, 5:57 PM To: license-discuss@opensource.org <license-discuss@opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org>> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] patent rights and the OSD By my reading, those "distribution terms" violate OSD #1 and #7. This is potentially a problem for any license (e.g., all the permissives) that doesn't specifically speak to patent rights. If the distribution terms specifically deny a patent grant, it will no longer be possible to freely redistribute the source code (that is, IF any contributor holds patent rights whose claims are implemented by the source code...).
_______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org https://lists.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
