Elsewhere on internal Apache member email lists we've been discussing a patent that may or may not apply to Apache software. I already quoted publicly the strongly-held opinion of one Apache member that "this patent is just plain BS, IMHO." He may be right.
My concern is that Apache members are not qualified to make this determination about any patent. Nor is the Apache Software Foundation resourced to do that analysis professionally for our users. However, I believe that ASF is obligated to disclose whatever patent information comes to our developers' and members' attention. This is one of the key purposes of a NOTICE file in open source software. Others disagree strongly. Here is what Roy Fielding wrote on a public Apache list on 27 Mar 2012: http://s.apache.org/B3F. I quote part of it now: It has been discussed. This idea is the moral equivalent of pointing a gun at our user while saying that it is most likely unloaded. It simply isn't done. Adobe has not asked for it to be done. The only company that has ever asked for it to be done is Sun, and we not only refused to do so -- we exited the entire Java community process because of it. So, the answer to your suggestion is well known. Sam knows that answer. He does not need to discuss it with you or anyone else because there is already a long history behind it and a board precedence. We do not notify our users that an unspecified patent might possibly be owned by some third-party based on a theoretical reading of a patent license on a specification that we don't even implement. If that third-party identifies a specific patent AND indicates that the patent might apply to our product, then we would include information about that in a README file (assuming we didn't kill the product outright). As a non-patent but practicing attorney, I don't believe I'd ever personally recommend that we kill an international Apache project outright simply because someone pointed a US patent gun at it. On the other hand, we have a NOTICE file and we owe our customers whatever the facts are. I'm looking for agreement by Apache customers to this NOTICE policy in a very antagonistic, patent-hating and unfriendly Apache community that takes such discussions personally, like religion. /Larry
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