GPL-like patent license

[Paul Syverson]

Hello,

The US govt. specifically NRL, has a patent on an anonymous
communications infrastructure called Onion Routing.  I am one of the
inventors.  We are working on a GPL/LGPL-like license for this.

As you may know, US govt. work is not subject to copyright and thus
cannot be GPLed directly, only through a patent license such as
this. I have already had the patents-are-evil discussion at great
length. I will not have it here, so don't try to engage me in it. My
purpose is to make the best possible use I can of this patent and to
do so as quickly as possible. I have looked at the Red Hat "Promise"
and Raph Levien's license, various "open patent" ideas. None seems to
quite provide what I want. In particular...

Some goals:

To foster development of such systems, with an eye towards
standardization.

To provide the same basic protections as GPL for the infrastructure
itself.

To allow proprietary interfaces into the infrastructure to encourage
commercial use and development of the technology, hence the allowance
of LGPL.

To prevent use of the patent under the license without distributing
source code by running systems, perhaps even providing a service,
and not distributing binaries; thus remaining compliant
with `the letter of GPL, but not the spirit'.

To be compatible with incorporating other GPL and LGPL programs
into the system.

To cover both US govt developed code and non-govt code (subject to
copyright).

Below is what I now have. I would appreciate comments.
Also, I hope to have the license in place in 2 weeks or so, so
don't wait a long time to respond.

Sincerely,
Paul Syverson


NRL hereby grants a fully paid up, nonexclusive, royalty free license
to practice the patent 6,266,704 if and only if
such practice is the development or use of computer software such that

1. Source code for all programs developed under this license must be
   publicly available, and public notice provided of means to obtain
   said source code.

2. All source code developed under this license must conspicuously and
   appropriately publish this license and an appropriate disclaimer of
   warranty on each copy; and must keep intact all the notices that refer
   to this license and to the absence of any warranty.

3. The publicly available source code under clauses 1 and 2 must either be
   US Govt work not subject to copyright or be copyright and
   made available according to the terms of any version of the GNU General
   Public License or the GNU Lesser General Public License as
   published by the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite
   330, Boston MA 02111.

4. Source code for all programs used under this license must be
   publicly available, and public notice provided of means to obtain
   said source code.

5. The publicly available source code under clause 4 must either be
   US Govt work not subject to copyright or be copyright and
   made available according to the terms of any version of the GNU General
   Public License or the GNU Lesser General Public License as
   published by the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite
   330, Boston MA 02111.

6. This license is irrevocable.

Any other use requires separate licensing agreement with NRL.



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