On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 11:36:54PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 07:09:21AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 11:44:13AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > > Bob creates Emacs, under a "claim patent infringement in this work > > > > and lose your license to it" license, which includes GIF decoding. > > > > > > > > Joe derives XEmacs from that work. This inherits, among many other > > > > things, GIF decoding. > > > > > > > > Bill sues Joe, claiming that XEmacs infringes his GIF patent. > > > > > > > > Does and should Bill lose his license to Emacs, in addition to XEmacs? > > > > I think the answer to both is yes. > > > > > > The copyright and patent holder has no need for a license. > > > > Bill is not a copyright holder at all in this scenario. > > Not a very interesting scenario, then. You can construct a scenario > where any license seems "reasonable", including a proprietary one. The > mark of free licenses is that you can't construct any where it's > unreasonable.
This scenario is constructed to respond to a specific message of Nathanael's, to argue that 1: for patent defense clauses to be useful, this type of license loss must occur, and 2: that this behavior is very similar to things we consider free. It is not a standalone example to argue that patent defense clauses are free. Please review the thread. -- Glenn Maynard
