To: Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> Subject: Re: [wietse@porcupine.org: Please review: Official IBM Public License] From: Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> Date: 23 Jun 1999 19:07:02 +0200 Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> writes: > And here it is. Reactions are welcome, before we apply this license > to Postfix/Secure Mailer. > IBM PUBLIC LICENSE - [INSERT NAME OF PROJECT] VERSION 1.0 > 6/14/99 Looks DFSG-ok to me. > If Recipient institutes patent litigation against a Contributor with > respect to a patent applicable to software (including a cross-claim or > counterclaim in a lawsuit), then any patent licenses granted by that > Contributor to such Recipient under this Agreement shall terminate > as of the date such litigation is filed. We've had some discussion before about clauses that said "if you issue any (software) patent litigation against me, then this program is not free for you". We never found out for certain whether that was DFSG-free or not - but it is not what is happening here: the above clause revokes *patent licenses* which are not required by the DFSG to be there in the first place. > In addition, If Recipient institutes patent litigation against any > entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) > alleging that the Program itself (excluding combinations of the > Program with other software or hardware) infringes such Recipient's > patent(s), then such Recipient's rights granted under Section 2(b) > shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. Here the very copyright license is revoked, but only if the patent litigation concerns the program itself. I think that free software should be allowed to try to defend *itself* (rather than the world at large) against software patents in this way. I'm not sure whether that could be read out of the letter of the DFSG, but I don't think we have any reason to pick nits about that. -- Henning Makholm -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-request@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org