For Approval: Open Source Software Alliance License

Arnoud Engelfriet galactus at stack.nl
Sat Sep 27 16:13:40 UTC 2003


John Cowan wrote:
> The AFL says that if you sue the author of an AFL-licensed piece of
> software under a software patent claim (related or not), you lose all
> rights to that software.

Actually it goes much further. If you sue any author of any AFL-
licensed software for patent infringement, you lose all rights 
to *all* AFL-licensed software, as well as all rights to all
other software with that same "poison pill" clause. Currently
that means you also lose rights to all OSL-licensed software.

The GPL has its own implicit patent poison pill, which works as
you describe above. That's because enforcing a patent right is
imposing a "further restriction" in GPL terms.

Arnoud

-- 
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
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