Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)

Rob Landley
2002-08-13T13:48:50Z

On Sunday 11 August 2002 07:44 pm, Daniel Phillips wrote:

> In other words, a license grant has to cover *all* uses of Linux and not
> just GPL uses.

Including a BSD license where source code is never released? Or dot-net
application servers hosted on a Linux system under lock and key in a vault
somewhere? And no termination clause, so this jerk can still sue you over
other frivolous patents?

So you would object to microsoft granting rights to its patents saying "you
can use this patent in software that runs on windows, but use it on any other
platform and we'll sue you", but you don't mind going the other way?

Either way BSD gets the shaft, of course. But then BSDI was doing that them
a decade ago, and Sun hired away Bill Joy and forked off SunOS years before
that, so they should be used to it by now... :) (And BSD runs plenty of GPL
application code...)

> In my opinion, RedHat has set a bad example by stopping short of promising
> free use of Ingo's patents for all Linux users. We are entering a
> difficult time, and such a wrong-footed move simply makes it more
> difficult.

Imagine a slimeball company that puts out proprietary software, gets a patent
on turning a computer on, and sues everybody in the northern hemisphere ala
rambus. They run a Linux system in the corner in their office, therefore
they are "a linux user". How do you stop somebody with that mindset from
finding a similarly trivial loophole in your language? (Think Spamford
Wallace. Think the CEO of Rambus. Think Unisys and the gif patent. Think
the people who recently got a patent on JPEG. Think the british telecom
idiots trying to patent hyperlinking a decade after Tim Berners-Lee's first
code drop to usenet...)

Today, all these people do NOT sue IBM, unless they're really stupid. (And
if they do, they will have cross-licensed their patent portfolio with IBM in
a year or two. Pretty much guaranteed.)

Rob