GPLv3, Microsoft/Novell language
April 2, 2007 2 Comments
A quick follow up to this post, Allison Randal has posted a good piece of some of the GPL modifications over at the O’Reilly Radar. From the post:
The core of the added language is:
You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you, and/or copies made from those, or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, which license does not cover, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of any of the rights that are specifically granted to recipients of the covered work under this License.
Translating that into plain English, it says: If you distribute GPLd software and make a deal with another company who also distributes (some kind of) software, we will stop you from distributing the GPLd software if:
a) you pay the other company
b) the deal mentions the GPLd software
c) you get a patent license
d) the patent license mentions the GPLd software
e) the patent license has more limited terms than the GPL license on the software
She then goes through some of her objections with the terms. The part that I most agree with and have covered before is:
My fourth objection is embodied in the old adage “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The FSF had success in the past accomplishing one goal with a license, so now they’re trying to accomplish a broad range of goals using the same tool. But a license really isn’t the best tool to accomplish some of these goals. Particularly, it’s not a good tool for attempting to abolish software patents or prevent companies from making patent agreements.
A license is simply not the place for every battle. That being said, it’s very good to see things moving in the right direction. The FSF seems to be taking feedback very seriously and this draft has been received much better than previous ones. I’m hopeful that when the final draft hits, most items will have been ironed out.
–jeremy
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