On Wednesday, April 11, 2007 11:34:42 AM -0400 Jeffrey Hutzelman
<jhutz@xxxxxxx> wrote:
For the record, I think your concerns about this particular license are
overstated. Neither this patent license nor the open-source software
licenses you quote are as buggy as you seem to think they are. For
example, the patent license contains the following text, which you
quoted: "This general use license granted to manufacturers also flows
down to sublicensees and users". This would appear to have the effect
that only the original implementor of the patented technology would need
to obtain a license from RedPhone; he would then simply include in the
software license a recursive sublicense for the patent.
Hm. Unfortunately, it seems there is other text that is problematic...
This...
The Protected Assurance System Functions listed below (the "PAS
Functions") define a set of functionality that Manufacturers under
this General Use License (e.g. manufacturers of receiver / server
components) must ensure is NOT implemented or provided to its users.
... would indeed appear to require anyone distributing an implementation
to impose additional restrictions, which is a problem.
Also, this is very bad:
In the event that a Manufacturer has (a) only been granted a General
Use License and (b) implemented and released to end users any PAS
Functions, such events shall cause the General Use License of that
Manufacturer to be immediately revoked, and any license rights
conferred to any users of the system that has implemented any PAS
Functions (above) shall be likewise revoked.
This appears to say that if someone violates the license terms, then
anyone who received a sublicense from them, directly or indirectly, is
also screwed, even if the user has not violated the terms of the license.
This is extremely unfriendly, not just to open source but to users in
general.
Finally, schedule B requires that specific text be "unambiguously displayed
at time of system installation". This requirement is impractical and in
any case impossible for open-source implementors to enforce.
-- Jeff
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