Re: GPL'ed Patent Pool

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    So two good reasons to do it are to move beyond the gentlemen's agreement to 
    something binding on the parties involved, and clarifying everything in 
    writing.  Those are easy to accomplish.

I agree that it would be better if these companies would explicitly
sign patent licenses for GNU, Linux, and other GPL-covered software.
(I would rather not describe this as a "pool", because that word
suggests a different sort of plan.)  I think the hardest part of that
job is to persuade these companies to take such a step--not in
designing license text for them to use.

The chance of convincing the companies to sign such a license would be
greatest, I think, if the details of the license are somewhat
flexible, if you get agreement in principle, then work out the license
with the specific company.  If any company is interested in doing this,
the FSF can work on the details with it.

    > The problems are very hard.  There are
    > many different ways to organize such a pool, but no one has come up
    > with a way that does the whole job.

    The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I was talking about the idea of a patent pool, a structure that would
grow to put increased pressure on other companies to enter it.  Nobody
is insisting on perfection.  The problem is, thus far nobody has found
a way to make it good enough to take off and fly.