For Approval: Broad Institute Public License (BIPL)

[Russ Nelson]

Lawrence Rosen writes:
 > If MIT refuses to grant a patent license for its software, then there is a
 > possibility that MIT (or its faculty, researchers, graduate students, staff,
 > etc.) will later claim royalties for the patents embodied in that software
 > from the users of that open source software. Is it your intention to allow
 > that? How is this at heart different from the Rambus licensing model?

Maybe Larry understands the solution, but I'm not sure I understand
the problem.  If MIT owns a patent, why is there any difficulty with
granting a license to it?  If a license for open source users is a
problem, then sooner or later you're going to get a pacifist who will
object to military uses, or a vegetarian who will object to
meat-packing uses.  If you think you have problems now, just try
crossing a Quaker.

It seems to me that the problem is that MIT's patent licensing system
is broken, not that there is a problem with the MPL that needs fixing.

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