IBM frees 500 patents [LWN.net]

IBM frees 500 patents

Posted Jan 11, 2005 19:49 UTC (Tue) by LogicG8 (guest, #11076)
In reply to: IBM frees 500 patents by jamesh
Parent article: IBM frees 500 patents

>So a BSD licensed program using one of these patents wouldn't strictly be BSD licensed.
It does kind of "ruin" the BSD license.

>This would effectively grant use of the patents for anything.
This isn't true because closing the source would be in conflict
with the terms of the patent license.

A company could write a library that uses a software
patent covered by this amnesty and release the library
under the BSD license thus complying with the terms of
the patent license. They can write a closed source
program that uses the library because the library
provides a "well defined interface" and so the program
would be a non-derivative work. The open source
library must be the entity which implements the
patent though.

The part that spoils the BSD license is if the original
company or another company tried to close the library source
they could no longer distribute the library because they
would be in violation of the patent license (not the
copyright license).

This takes away a lot of the "freedom" of the BSD license
and makes it a lot more viral like the GPL license.

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IBM frees 500 patents

Posted Jan 12, 2005 3:09 UTC (Wed) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link]

I t does kind of "ruin" the BSD license.

Bollox.

BSD never granted patent rights. If anything, this strengthens BSD. Code released under BSD/MIT/Apache licenses are now granted a patent license. Porprietized derivations must, as with any other proprietary software, arrange for licensing terms with IBM (or take their lumps).

If anything, it provides a stronger incentive to not free-ride on BSD terms. Not that BSDers have a problem with this (it's what their license grants, and what most of them explicitly want to provide). But it should make the software itself somewhat more tenable. I see a plus.