MS-RL equivalents?

[Chris Travers]

IANAL, etc.

On Nov 21, 2007 1:41 PM, Tzeng, Nigel H. <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu> wrote:
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> Is there an approved license like MS-Reciprocal License without the patent
> grant?

I don't think so.  I would think that any FOSS license would have to
include some sort of implied patent license because these rights are
required to exercise the main rights granted under the license (the
right to use and distribute the code, verbatim or modified).  Hence I
don't think a company could release a program under, say, the BSD
license and then sue people who used or distributed their software
(which they had licensed) under that license using patents claims.
IANAL, but I would think "permission is hereby granted" without any
mention of patents or not would include an implied agreement not to
sue for *any* copyright or patent issues arising from the permitted
activities.

I read the MS-RL differently than you.  I think it only addresses the
patents that a contributor has which read directly on that
contribution.  I.e. if contributor A's patch infringes in contributor
B's patent, I don't think the MS-RL provides any license to that
patent.  The only protection there is if contributor B then sues over
that patent, then any of Contributor A's patent licenses no longer
apply to contributor B.  This strikes me as *very* narrow protection
(and substantially narrower than express or implied patent licenses in
other FOSS licenses).

>I have already rejected LGPL and MS-RL would be fine except I don't
> want to have to prove that my software isn't providing access to some patent
> created by some other inventor here.

What portion of the MS-RL are you concerned about?

I would suggest that the Software Freedom Law Center would be better
able to help you than we are :-)

Best WIshes,
Chris Travers