OSDL announces Patent Commons Project

Posted Aug 14, 2005 4:23 UTC (Sun) by pimlott (guest, #1535)
In reply to: OSDL announces Patent Commons Project by dwheeler
Parent article: OSDL announces Patent Commons Project

Yes, this would in essence cause that program to behave legally like a GPL'ed program in those countries where software patents are legal and a patent covers the work, as you noted.

Not quite: Most patent holders are happy to grant you a license to use their patent in a non-free program for a fee. You cannot buy a separate license from most GPL licensors.

Patents may have the side-effect of eliminating the MIT and BSD licenses long term in software patent granting countries.

I don't see any evidence for that. The BSD model is only threatened if a) lots of patents are freely licensed for GPL code only, and the patent holders attack BSD licensors; or 2) lots of patents are licensed for free software only (that is, you can't buy a license for proprietary code), and the patent holders attack proprietary software publishers. Both scenarios are unlikely.