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Red Hat and software patentsRed Hat and software patentsPosted Jun 4, 2002 4:13 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159)Parent article: Red Hat and software patents
It is fairly clear why they exclude BSD and LGPL licenses. Those licenses allow linking with proprietary software. If those licenses were allowed, someone could write some proprietary code, but put the code that implements the patented process in a separate file under BSD or LGPL, effectively giving them a free license to the code. The licenses listed have linking restrictions that specify the terms derivative works may be distributed under. As for BSD code not being allowed to use the patents, that doesn't hold much water. They could easily license the individual source files under BSD license, but license the package as a whole under the GPL. If some company wanted to build a proprietary fork, then they could still use the source, but they would need to buy a license for the patent. Of course, you should consult a Lawyer about things like this, or ask for clarification from Red Hat. Of course, these patents only really affect people doing business in the US ...
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