Keep in mind the different programs involved

Posted Sep 22, 2012 10:36 UTC (Sat) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054)
In reply to: Patent licence by gidoca
Parent article: Twin Peaks v. Red Hat

The comments above give the impression (at least to me) that folks are thinking of Twin Peaks' offerings as a monolith. In fact, RH is suing over the mount program. mount being in violation of the GPL says nothing about the rest of their suite (FUD to the contrary notwithstanding). (Of course, if you're selling a filesystem, not having mount could put a crimp in your operations. :-)

Thus, unless mount uses the patent in question, buying a copy would afford no protection. Even if it did, the implicit license for mount wouldn't extend to any other random use of that patent.

Keep in mind the different programs involved

Posted Sep 24, 2012 9:15 UTC (Mon) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link]

You are right, I didn't think that far. My main point, though, was that IMHO shipping GPL software in violation to the licence doesn't free you from the GPL's obligations, since that doesn't terminate the agreement.

As to the discussion below whether you have to explicitly agree to a contract, at least in Swiss law (which is the only one I have the faintest knowledge about) there are three ways to enter a contract:
- written, by signature
- orally
- by taking an action that implies your intention to enter the contract (this is called "stillschweigend", which literally means tacitly, in German)