Re: patent on O_ATOMICLOOKUP [Re: [PATCH] loopable tmpfs (2.4.17)]

Linus Torvalds
2002-05-25T20:54:29Z

On Sat, 25 May 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> I'd like to take this opportunity to take a turn back towards the original
> issue: supposing that Ingo's/Red Hat's patented extension to the dcache is
> accepted into the kernel. Would not the GPL's patent trap provision
> prevent Red Hat from distributing the result, unless Red Hat also provides
> a license for the patent permitting unrestricted use *regardless of
> commercial or noncommercial use* of the patent in the context of the GPL'd
> code?

Absolutely.

Patents are bad, but I think peoples "charge the red flag" reactions to
them are also bad.

I think it was Alan who just suggested to Andrea that he'd ask for an
explicit piece of paper _saying_ it was ok, instead of paniccing.

I don't much like patents, but we're forced to live with them. I suspect
the best thing we can do is to use them as well as we can. Which is why I
don't personally think it's a problem that RedHat, FSMlabs etc get
patents.

Can those patents result in trouble? Sure as hell. But let's put it this
way: I'm a _lot_ happier about a RedHat/FSMlabs patent that gets licensed
to GPL users than I am about a patent by somebody who would want to screw
with the GPL.

Linus