License Discussion for the Broad Institute Public License (BIPL)

[Philippe Verdy]

From: "Matthew Garrett" <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org>
> On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 01:10:37AM +0200, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> 
>> My feeling about this issue isthat if the MIT cannot guarantee that 
>> its BIPL-licence software does not contain any material covered by a 
>> non-free patent, then the BIPL itself is definitely not free software. 
>> This licence does not merit to be approved as an open-source licence 
>> either, because users still need to look themselves for possible 
>> patents covering the software.
> 
> There are many open source licenses (the BSD and MIT/X11 licenses, for 
> instance) that do not require full disclosure of any patents that apply 
> to the software.

Wel, that's the merit of free software against "open-source" as used by Sun in its SCSL... (But Sun correctly describes that the software may include patent-covered materials, and that the licence is personnal and not transferable to sublicensees; may be then the MIT should better use the Sun SCSL approach).

I really don't like hidden bullets in fake licences.