WebM license resolution.

[Wilson, Andrew]

Chris DiBona [mailto:cdibona at gmail.com] wrote:

>> Chris, my personal kudos to you for not inventing a new license.  Question:
>> could the additional IP grant be extended to "Google and WebM contributors"
>> rather than Google alone?
>
> No. As others might give us patches, we could be interpreted as providing
> coverage for their patents,too, which we can't do.
>
>
>> If you will have an Android-style contributor agreement for WebM, all contributors
>> would be granting you sufficient patent rights to extend the IP grant.
>
> Sort of, we're reviewing the CLA.

So, today a WebM user gets an explicit patent license from Google for Google's code, but nothing
beyond whatever might be implicit in bare BSD for any code accepted into WebM owned by 3rd
parties.

Your CLA could require contributors to make a Google-like patent statement with respect
to their own code submissions, but of course, you've already thought of that....

Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology center