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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


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