Fwd: Changes to the WebM Open Source License

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http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/changes-to-webm-open-source-license.html
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Changes to the WebM Open Source License
Friday, June 4, 2010 | 9:20 AM
You'll see on the WebM license page and in our source code
repositories that we've made a small change to our open source
license. There were a couple of issues that popped up after we
released WebM at Google I/O a couple weeks ago, specifically around
how the patent clause was written.

As it was originally written, if a patent action was brought against
Google, the patent license terminated. This provision itself is not
unusual in an OSS license, and similar provisions exist in the 2nd
Apache License and in version 3 of the GPL. The twist was that ours
terminated "any" rights and not just rights to the patents, which made
our license GPLv3 and GPLv2 incompatible. Also, in doing this, we
effectively created a potentially new open source copyright license,
something we are loath to do.

Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent
clauses, in this new iteration of the the patent clause we've
decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature
of the copyright license. This means we are no longer creating a new
open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its
own. Additionally, we have updated the patent grant language to make
it clearer that the grant includes the right to modify the code and
give it to others. (We've updated the licensing FAQ to reflect these
changes as well.)

We've also added a definition for the "this implementation" language,
to make that more clear.

Thanks for your patience as we worked through this, and we hope you
like, enjoy (and most importantly) use WebM and join with us in
creating more freedom online. We had a lot of help on these changes,
so thanks to our friends in open source and free software who traded
many emails, often at odd hours, with us.

Chris DiBona is the Open Source Programs Manager at Google.
..................

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com
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