BSD and MIT license "compliance" with the MS-PL

[Donovan Hawkins]

> saulgoode at flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com
wrote: 
> 
> This is the cause for my concern. If a
collaborative project 
> incorporates some MIT-licensed code then
even in the case of releasing 
> binaries, unless the project is
the copyright holder for the entirety 
> of that MIT-licensed
codebase (or other arrangements have been made 
> with all
copyright holders of contributions), it is not empowered to 
>
terminate any patent claims inhered in that code. Without offering a 
> patent grant for code contributed by all project collaborators, the

> project can't "comply with" the MS-PL and meet its
requirements.

You'd have to consult a lawyer, but I don't
see why the patent revokation would have to apply to the MIT-licensed
portion. Moreover, to the extent the closed source author has provided a
patent grant in his closed source license he can revoke that grant
regardless of whether he is the original holder of the
patent. He couldn't enforce the patent against the user if they
ignored him, but the MS-PL doesn't require that.

Donovan Hawkins
hawkins at cephira.com
via webmail