Simon Josefsson simon@josefsson.org wrote:
Hi! I'm writing guidelines for IETF document authors on how to achieve free software compatible copyright and patent licenses [1]. [...] [1] http://josefsson.org/bcp78broken/draft-josefsson-free-standards-howto.html Does anyone have some references to any patent license that have been deemed acceptable to some free software projects?
Going further, is there some kind of patent license that free software would _prefer_ (as opposed to just _accept_)?
Thank you for writing guidelines. I cannot answer the above two questions. I am mostly ignorant of software patent licensing because I believe pure software is a sequence of mathematical expressions which cannot be invented, only discovered.
To give a concrete example of what I'm thinking of:
There is one patent license in https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/942/:
Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation (in whole or in part) of this specification. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to You under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
This patent license is a reciprocal license, but is fairly limited in scope.
Would that be acceptable to free software projects?
No, I think - to call it free software, I would want to be able to use the patent-covered software "for any purpose" and not just "implementation of this specification" like in the above. Compare with http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html
Hope that explains,