<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2">Christopher D.Coppola wrote:<BR> > I'm writing to request approval of the Educational Community License 2.0. ECL<BR> > 2.0 is intended to replace ECL 1.0 (<A href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl1.php">http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl1.php</A>)<BR> > and it is closely modeled after the Apache 2.0 license in an effort to reduce<BR> > the burdens of license proliferation.<BR> <BR> As far as I can tell, the addition of:<BR> <BR> "Any patent license granted hereby with respect to contributions by an<BR> individual employed by an institution or organization is limited to<BR> patent claims where the individual that is the author of the Work is<BR> also the inventor of the patent claims licensed, and where the<BR> organization or institution has the right to grant such license under<BR> applicable grant and research funding agreements. No other express or<BR> implied licenses are granted."<BR> <BR> is the only substantial change you made. Is this correct?<BR> <BR></FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>That is correct Matthew.<BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2"> With regarding the specific phrasing of that paragraph, it should<BR> probably say "affiliated with a Legal Entity" and "the Legal Entity has<BR> the right to grant".<BR></FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>Your suggestion seems a little cleaner that what's there. I'll run it by a few other stakeholders.<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2"> It was also pointed out that MIT has used (and indeed wrote) the MIT<BR> license (<A href="http://opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/mit-license.php">http://opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/mit-license.php</A>). Some<BR> people argued that the "use" word in that license is a clear implicit<BR> patent grant to all claims infringed by the software and owned by the<BR> licensor. It was even suggested that was part of /why/ MIT made the MIT<BR> license. Casual searches indicate other members of the Sakai coalition<BR> have used the MIT license<BR> (<A href="http://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/OSX/swapfile/license.html">http://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/OSX/swapfile/license.html</A>,<BR> <A href="http://weblogo.berkeley.edu/LICENSE">http://weblogo.berkeley.edu/LICENSE</A>, etc.). So it's difficult for me to<BR> agree you can't make broad patent grants when it seems you already are.<BR></FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>Is it generally agreed that a license like the MIT license implictly grants a patent license as you describe was pointed out? I'm not a lawyer, but in all my discussions with lawyers and others on this topic that's the first time I've heard that. One of the reasons we're wanting to improve our license is to make explicit patent grants. MIT and Berkeley have been very involved in these discussions. They are key contributors to our projects and I'm assuming, based on many conversations with them, that they did not believe (or understand) that their use of the MIT license implicitly does what you're suggesting.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>One other thing about these projects. They are somewhat unique in that an institution's participation in the projects and the commitment of resources (people and dollars) to the projects comes from institutional leadership that may be looking more closely at these kind of issues than previous involvement in open source that may have emerged bottom-up.<BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2"> <BR> However, your license is an improvement in at least one way. It doesn't<BR> allow the patent grant to be superseded after the fact if the university<BR> later makes an exclusive patent grant (supposedly by accident). It's an<BR> apparently irrevocable grant of licensable patents, but only for the<BR> individual developer(s) (not the whole university). It still has the<BR> enormous problem that it allows the university to sue the<BR> users/redistributors of its own program (if a separate patent is<BR> infringed), but it doesn't allow a grant to be taken back.<BR> Interestingly, MIT proposed an idea like this but never actually<BR> submitted a version of the license with it.<BR> <BR></FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>Thanks for the comments. We realize that this isn't the ideal situation. We are also committed to working on the problem as a community. This interim step... Using an approved ECL 2.0 will be a big step in the right direction for our communities. <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P> </P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><DIV>/Chris</DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>