<div dir="auto"><div>Josh, I don't think you're taking estoppel doctrine into account.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">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.</div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Bruce Perens K6BP</div></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Nov 3, 2025, 14:38 Josh Berkus <<a href="mailto:josh@berkus.org">josh@berkus.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">On 11/3/25 1:01 AM, Morten Fruelund wrote:<br>
> The license text does not contain any restrictions with regard to fields <br>
> of endeavor, and it does not distinguish between virtual and physical <br>
> use or the purpose of the use. In order to achieve the goal, you <br>
> mention, we simply opted to only grant a copyright license to the <br>
> licensed material, and not include, e.g., a patent license like many <br>
> other open-source licenses also do not do.<br>
<br>
That's an interesting approach, a big hedging on the spirit of OSS, but <br>
allowable (in my individual opinion) as long as you don't explicitly <br>
deny patent rights. When you have updated your text from other <br>
commentary, go ahead and submit it to license-review and we'll delve <br>
into the actual text.<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Josh Berkus<br>
<br>
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