[License-discuss] Proposal of new new open-source license for graphics (TERO-GL-1.0)

[Bruce Perens]

Josh, I don't think you're taking  estoppel doctrine into account.

While BSD, for example, does not include an explicit patent grant, there
are many qualified people who believe it has an implicit one through the
doctrine of estoppel. I think Lotar Determann (Berkeley Law professor,
legal textbook author, of counsel at Baker and McKenzie, and my sometime
co-author) is the highest status attorney to say no (to me), a lot of other
attorneys I've talked to say yes. IMO this could be likely to be resolved
in a long and expensive litigation, which would be great for the people who
want certainty but a pyrric victory for the plaintiff and defendant.

Bruce Perens K6BP

On Mon, Nov 3, 2025, 14:38 Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org> wrote:

> On 11/3/25 1:01 AM, Morten Fruelund wrote:
> > The license text does not contain any restrictions with regard to fields
> > of endeavor, and it does not distinguish between virtual and physical
> > use or the purpose of the use. In order to achieve the goal, you
> > mention, we simply opted to only grant a copyright license to the
> > licensed material, and not include, e.g., a patent license like many
> > other open-source licenses also do not do.
>
> That's an interesting approach, a big hedging on the spirit of OSS, but
> allowable (in my individual opinion) as long as you don't explicitly
> deny patent rights.  When you have updated your text from other
> commentary, go ahead and submit it to license-review and we'll delve
> into the actual text.
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
>
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