Re: Negotiating for using Royalty Free patents

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 07:43:00PM +0800, James Henstridge wrote:
> Daniel Veillard wrote:
> 
> > You basically cannot Licence a patent for free software project,
> >it's not only an ethic issue, licencing the patent means defining
> >a framework for which using that patent is granted, and unless that
> >patent licence has no restriction (basically releasing it) that mean
> >people outside of that framework cannot reuse the code freely. This
> >is a problem.
> >
> It is possible for a company to allow their patent to be used in some 
> free software while still being able to license it for use in closed 
> products.
> 
> Raph Levien has made a grant for use of his patents for use in software 
> released under the GPL:
>    http://www.levien.com/patents.html
> 
> With this grant, it is okay to use his patents in GPL software since it 
> doesn't impose any additional terms on top of those in the GPL.  People 
> who wish to use his patents in non-GPL software would require a 
> different license.

  Still this approach is extremely dangerous, you get stuck with external
constrainst about what you can do with the code, for example this could
prevent the Copyright owners to change the Licence due to this external
dependancy. Any time you try to negociate about patents you loose freedom.
I suggest staying away from such scheme this is far too dangerous on the
long term, sorry I do not believe in this.

Daniel

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