Three new proposed OSD terms

[David Dillard]

Well, Professor Moglen has stated there will be a patent defense clause
in the upcoming GPL v3.   Assuming that ends up being good enough it
certainly would be nice to have the same patent defense language in
other licenses.  It makes life easier on the lawyers.


--- David



> -----Original Message-----
> From: David A. Wheeler [mailto:dwheeler at dwheeler.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 4:31 PM
> To: mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org
> Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: Three new proposed OSD terms
> 
> I said:
> > >   So how do you pick the recommended list?  I think the 
> short answer
> > >   is, use popularity as your guide, both in lines of code 
> and # of projects....
> > >   A long list would probably look like
> > >   GPL, LGPL, MIT, BSD-new, MPL (or some variant), Artistic.
> 
> Matthew Garrett said:
> > While I agree that a recommended list would be an excellent 
> aid, with 
> > the exception of the MPL there's no patent-defence clauses in the 
> > listed licenses. That's not something that concerns me a 
> great deal, 
> > but I can see it being an issue for other people.
> 
> I see no conflict.  If you want patent-defense, use the MPL 
> (or whatever the "unified MPL" becomes, if one is ever developed).
> It's already on the list.
> 
> If there's a simple patent-defense clause that's WIDELY 
> accepted, I can even imagine a small set of "common license 
> riders" that could be approved as "recommended". You can then 
> "append" to your license and still keep it Recommended/Gold/whatever.
> 
> But something to reduce the risk of incompatible licenses 
> does sound like a reasonable goal.
> 
> --- David A. Wheeler
>