At 10:02 AM -0700 10/24/07, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Ted Hardie wrote:
The point being, of course, that there is a world of difference between
"many" and "all" here. If there is no development community using
the GPL in an area, forcing the IPR restrictions to meet a GPL test
may hinder development rather than enhance it, especially in
cases where the only requirement in a license is to request it.
For many development communities, that is not an issue since it
requires no monetary outlay.
Will you please stop talking about GPL as if it is the only open source
license relevant here!
Sorry, but the context in this part of the thread was specific to the GPL.
To refresh your memory on the bits the Brian, Norbert, and Scott
put forward that set that context:
Norbert wrote:
How about: 'Should be possible to implement without having to ask for
permission or pay a fee'?
Brian replied:
That will never fly. For good reason, many patent holders insist
on reciprocity conditions, and that seems to require an explicit
request and acknowledgement.
Scott add:
And that will never fly (IANAL) with the GPL and so here we sit at an
impasse again. So either a GPL implementation is important to
interoperability in a given space or it is not. If it is important to
interoperabilty, then this is a showstopper. If not, maybe not.
Hope that helps restore context for you.
My concern is that *all* free and open source
licensors be able to implement IETF specifications without patent
encumbrances. And *all* proprietary licensors too, for that matter. There
ought to be no "GPL test" for IETF specifications, other than that our
specifications be implementable and distributable under the GPL *and any
other* license.
The world as it is now simply does include licenses that aren't compatible.
As Brian pointed out, reciprocity conditions are common, as are requests
to acknowledge. If Scott is right and these won't work with the
GPL, working groups will have choices to make about the
implementation and deployment communities' needs. This is why we
keep pushing the decision into the working groups, rather than making
a priori IPR choices: it's the place most likely to know whether a
reciprocal license/royalty-bearing license/piece of GPL'ed code in the standards
document is actually likely to cause a problem.
regards,
Ted
