New Licensing Model?

[bruce at perens.com]

>     Basically, we are working on a license for the technology that gives
> people free license (as protected by our patents, copyrights, and
> trademarks) to use the technology in their products and limited use of the
> technology's name in relation to their product, unless they sell it for
> commercial use.  If they sell the product, then they must get their product
> certified to be compliant by us.

Good intention, but there are a few problems I'd like you to work on.

If you are explicitly restricting your patents in a way that would constitute
a prohibition on sale of the software, that would fail paragraph 1 of the Open
Source Definition.

You would also run awry of the GPL's language about patents. Please read that.

I suggest you blanket-license your patents for use by any program that is
licensed entirely under the GPL (I mean a program that has no non-GPL
components). Anyone who wants to write proprietary code will have to go
to you for a patent license, and thus your revenue stream will be protected
while you will also have your system entirely in Open Source and your patents
licensed in an OSD and GPL-compliant manner.

I'm confident that you can work out a way to do that protects your profits
and is OSD and GPL-compliant. If you'd like to have a talk about it, feel
free to call me at 510-526-1165.

	Thanks

	Bruce