On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 02:59:20PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > Lawsuits are not intrinsically bad for free software.
Software patent lawsuits attempting to prevent the use and distribution of free software certainly is intrinsically bad for free software. > It is unarguably superior that source should always be available for a > free software project. You cannot say the same for prohibiting > lawsuits. It is not unarguably the case that source requirements are always beneficial to free software. I could easily give an example where they were detrimental, and the development of a free software project was furthered by dropping them. (I'm not interested in debating whether this was actually so or not; it was, and I'll leave it at that for the sake of avoiding pointless tangents.) (I doubt that any copyright-enforced requirement made in the interests of benefitting free software will result, in every single case, in being beneficial and not detrimental. There are almost always exceptions.) > In short, all the usual things that distinguish valid applications of > DFSG#5/#6 from invalid ones (even if they are fiendishly difficult to > understand). I believe, at least in principle, patent defense clauses readily pass DFSG#5/#6. (I'm not yet sure they can be implemented without introducing possibility for abuse, but that's a separate issue.) -- Glenn Maynard
