Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 11:41:19AM -0700, Rob Lanphier wrote: > >>>>On Tue, 2004-07-27 at 10:48, Matthew Garrett wrote: >>>> >>>>>Think about the reverse situation, where a free software developer >>>>>using software under the RPSL discovers that it breaches a patent he >>>>>holds. Why should his legitimate case result in the removal of his >>>>>rights to do anything with the code? > > Personally, I don't really find the "prevents legitimate offensive patent use" > argument too convincing. In practice, software patents are so broken that > I don't really care if a license prevents "legitimate defending of a patent", > at least on the offensive side. > > I do tend to sympathize with defensive patents, if only because it's the only > defense most companies have against offensive patents. So, I feel there may > be something wrong with a license that says "if we sue you, and you sue us > back, you lose your license to this software".
I would agree with this entirely. I don't think we should be interested in the ability to sue the author over patents in the work and still keep the right to use the work; that would allow a patent holder to effectively take the software proprietary. In my opinion, the only issue we should be concerned about here is termination for unrelated patent action. - Josh Triplett
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