GPL-like patent license

Mark Shewmaker mark at primefactor.com
Thu Jul 18 18:47:42 UTC 2002


On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 01:48:49PM -0400, Paul Syverson wrote:
> 
> NRL hereby grants a fully paid up, nonexclusive, royalty free license
> to practice the patent 6,266,704 if and only if such practice is the
> generation, modification, distribution, and/or execution of a computer
> program or programs such that
> 
> 1. Source code for all programs run under this license must be
>    publicly available, and public notice provided of means to obtain
>    said source code.

I've followed your conversation with Vries, and I don't know if this
is GPL compatible.  I remember comments on the list in the past from
the FSF to the effect that it is not.

Looking through the archives I do find the following comments of
Stallman's on this type of topic:

Quoting Stallman from http://steve-parker.org/articles/lego/rms1.txt :

|From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
|To: Steve Parker <steve at steve-parker.org>
|Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 05:55:14 -0700 (MST)
|Subject: Re: Clarification of GPL for user article
|
|    Scenario 1) I modify GPL code - eg emacs - to suit my own needs, purely to
|    use the modified binary on my own system. I never intend, and never do,
|    distribute this in any form.
|    My own interpretation of the GPL is that I am free to do this.
|
|That is correct.  In fact, this is one of the freedoms that are part
|of the definition of Free Software (see
|http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html).
|
|    Scenario 2) I modify GPL code - eg a CGI library - to suit my own needs for
|    use on a publicly-available web server. This code is being run, by the
|    general public, on my web server. Should I, in this case, make the code 
|    available? Under the GPL, must I?
|
|The GPL does not require it.  But is not very good for the community
|when people do this, so I am looking at a way that GPL 3 could
|require publication in this case.

And then at
http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:5124:cmchnmfmgngdglbncgff
and at http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/gplv3-plans :

|Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 09:24:38 -0700 (MST)
|Message-Id: <200203151624.g2FGOcZ06822 at wijiji.santafe.edu>
|From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
|To: nelson at crynwr.com
|CC: bruce at perens.com, brian at collab.net, license-discuss at opensource.org,
|   moglen at columbia.edu, board at opensource.org, rms at gnu.org
|In-reply-to: <15504.49543.94196.814446 at desk.crynwr.com> (message from Russell
|	Nelson on Thu, 14 Mar 2002 10:33:12 -0500 (EST))
|Subject: Re: OSD modification regarding what license can require of user
|Reply-to: rms at gnu.org
|References: <20020209205015.B362B9CB64 at perens.com>
|	<15463.18541.181867.601368 at desk.crynwr.com>
|	<20020313202007.GA19110 at perens.com>
|	<200203141242.g2ECg7p06133 at wijiji.santafe.edu> <15504.49543.94196.814446 at desk.crynwr.com>
|Status: RO
|Content-Length: 464
|Lines: 10
|
|The reason we've decided that this ASP requirement is legitimate is
|that it is a matter of requiring making the modified source code
|available in a case of public use.  It extends existing GPL
|requirements coherently to a new scenario of usage.
|
|It would be wrong to require publication of modified versions
|that are used privately, but inviting the public to use a server
|is not private use.
|--
|license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3

If the next version of the GPL will extend (or allow to be extended)
the current requirements for public use, *and* Stallman thinks
such a requirement would be wrong with private use, then whether it
the requirement you propose is workable with the current GPL is
not the end of the story--the GPL3 may have language incompatible
with your requirement.

I would suggest:

1.  Asking the FSF if they consider your requirement #1 to be
    compatible with the [L]GPL.
2.  Asking the FSF if they think that your requirement #1 will
    be compatible with the [L]GPLv3.

At the very least you can forestall unnecessary incompatibilities
with your license and the next versions of the GPL.  (I have done
this myself with the OPL<->GPL, although admittedly only to the point
that Bradley Kuhn and I agree that there is no point in having
gratuitous incompatibilities.)


Would you consider revising your point #1 in such a way that
there is only a publication requirement for public use of
the covered code?  You would lose the ability to see internal
changes to covered code, but that's an almost unenforceable
violation of your license anyway.  From a practical matter,
as discussed on this list before, it is generally more expensive
for people to maintain separate internal branches of free code,
constantly incorporating outside patches, as opposed to releasing
their patches and updates to the public project maintainers.

Does the gain of having access to everyone's modifications:

o  via a practically unenforceable licensing term, and
o  when very few companies/people would be able to continually
    keep such modifications from the standard trees in the first
    place,

outweigh the losses of

o  having a contraversal license that may be incompatible
    with the GPLv2 and perhaps the GPLv3,
o  which possibly makes people try to needlessly work around
    your patent with similar but unpatented functionality,

when you can get almost the same thing in a way compatible with the
public goals of the GPLv3 in this area and only lose a comparative
handful of modifications?

 -Mark Shewmaker
  mark at openpatents.org
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3



More information about the License-discuss mailing list