http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html
Red Hat, Inc. Statement of Position and Our Promise on Software Patents Our Position on Software Patents
Red Hat has consistently taken the position that software patents generally impede innovation in software development and that software patents are inconsistent with open source/free software. Red Hat representatives have addressed this issue before the National Academies of Science, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Red Hat is also a signatory to a petition to the European Union encouraging the EU not to adopt a policy of permitting software patents. We will continue to work to promote this position and are pleased to join our colleagues in the open source/free software community, as well as those proprietary vendors which have publicly stated their opposition to software patents, in that effort.
At the same time, we are forced to live in the world as it is, and that world currently permits software patents. A relatively small number of very large companies have amassed large numbers of software patents. We believe such massive software patent portfolios are ripe for misuse because of the questionable nature of many software patents generally and because of the high cost of patent litigation.
One defense against such misuse is to develop a corresponding portfolio of software patents for defensive purposes. Many software companies, both open source and proprietary, pursue this strategy. In the interests of our company and in an attempt to protect and promote the open source community, Red Hat has elected to adopt this same stance. We do so reluctantly because of the perceived inconsistency with our stance against software patents; however, prudence dictates this position.
At the same time, Red Hat will continue to maintain its position as an open source leader and dedicated participant in open source collaboration by extending the promise set forth below. Our Promise with Respect to Software Patents We Hold
Definitions:
Approved License means any of the following licenses: GNU General Public License v2.0; IBM Public License v1.0; Common Public License v0.5; Q Public License v1.0; and any Red Hat open source license. Red Hat may add to this list in its sole discretion by publication on this page.
Open Source/Free Software means any software which is licensed under an Approved License.
Patent Rights means any of the rights to make, use sell, offer to sell, import or otherwise transfer software, in either source code or object code form. Red Hat means Red Hat, Inc.
Our Promise:
Subject to any qualifications or limitations stated herein, to the extent any party exercises a Patent Right with respect to Open Source/Free Software which reads on any claim of any patent held by Red Hat, Red Hat agrees to refrain from enforcing the infringed patent against such party for such exercise ("Our Promise"). Our Promise does not extend to any software which is not Open Source/Free Software, and any party exercising a Patent Right with respect to non-Open Source/Free Software which reads on any claims of any patent held by Red Hat must obtain a license for the exercise of such rights from Red Hat. Our Promise does not extend to any party who institutes patent litigation against Red Hat with respect to a patent applicable to software (including a cross-claim or counterclaim to a lawsuit). No hardware per se is licensed hereunder.
Each party relying on Our Promise acknowledges that Our Promise is not an assurance that Red Hat's patents are enforceable or that the exercise of rights under Red Hat's patents does not infringe the patent or other intellectual property rights of any other entity. Red Hat disclaims any liability to any party relying on Our Promise for claims brought by any other entity based on infringement of intellectual property rights or otherwise. As a condition to exercising the Patent Rights permitted by Our Promise hereunder, each relying party hereby assumes sole responsibility to secure any other intellectual property rights needed, if any.
There are two important things to note here:
On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 04:00:38PM +0200, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
Approved License means any of the following licenses: GNU General Public License v2.0; IBM Public License v1.0; Common Public License v0.5; Q Public License v1.0; and any Red Hat open source license. Red Hat may add to this list in its sole discretion by publication on this page.
Open Source/Free Software means any software which is licensed under an Approved License.
This is not an accepted definition. They especially exclude the very important Free Software licenses with less freedom protection like GNU LGPL and XFree86 license.
The reason is obvious: It would completely invalid the use of the patent.
Subject to any qualifications or limitations stated herein, to the extent any party exercises a Patent Right with respect to Open Source/Free Software which reads on any claim of any patent held by Red Hat, Red Hat agrees to refrain from enforcing the infringed patent against such party for such exercise ("Our Promise"). Our Promise does not extend to any software which is not Open Source/Free Software,
This is quite missleading as they do not promise to respect all of Free Software (or Open Source conforming licenses for this matter).
Note 2: In my eyes Software on which a patent exists does indeed take away the second freedom to study how the program works. What is studying worth if you cannot use your learned knowledge (ideas not the code) to implement something similiar and use it to earn money.
Bernhard Reiter wrote:
Note 2: In my eyes Software on which a patent exists does indeed take away the second freedom to study how the program works. What is studying worth if you cannot use your learned knowledge (ideas not the code) to implement something similiar and use it to earn money.
That sounds more like not being allowed to "help your neighbour". I can study the source, I can modfiy it, I can publish my changes but I am bound to a defined set of licenses.
Red Hat may add to this list in its sole discretion by publication on this page.
At least indicates that they will not subtract from this list. But I am eagre to see their reaction and the possible longstanding discussion when GPL 3 comes out.
When you have licensed your application for example with
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
And the GPL 3 is not (yet) included in the RedHat allow-list what will be happening? Will you have to change your licensing to GPL 2 only? Will your right to use their patents be terminated?
Jan Wildeboer
On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 06:12:55PM +0200, Jan Wildeboer wrote:
Bernhard Reiter wrote:
Note 2: In my eyes Software on which a patent exists does indeed take away the second freedom to study how the program works. What is studying worth if you cannot use your learned knowledge (ideas not the code) to implement something similiar and use it to earn money.
That sounds more like not being allowed to "help your neighbour". I can study the source, I can modfiy it, I can publish my changes but I am bound to a defined set of licenses.
If you modify the sources you are bound by the license already. The GNU GPL will not permit you to publish this under a different license then anyway.
Bernhard Reiter wrote:
If you modify the sources you are bound by the license already. The GNU GPL will not permit you to publish this under a different license then anyway.
Not even a GPL compatible license not included in the RedHat allow list? Just curious and willing to learn ;-)
Jan Wildeboer
On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 06:30:43PM +0200, Jan Wildeboer wrote:
Bernhard Reiter wrote:
If you modify the sources you are bound by the license already. The GNU GPL will not permit you to publish this under a different license then anyway.
Not even a GPL compatible license not included in the RedHat allow list? Just curious and willing to learn ;-)
I don't fully understand your question. The list by Redhat contained the GNU GPL.
The license is about copyright on the code. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html should answer quite well what that means for the source code and derative works.
Patents are about ideas and are a different legal level.
On Wed, 29 May 2002 18:38:45 +0200, Bernhard Reiter said:
Not even a GPL compatible license not included in the RedHat allow list? Just curious and willing to learn ;-)
I don't fully understand your question. The list by Redhat contained the GNU GPL.
Jan asked why GPL compatible licenses are not included. This would include the reformed BSD one and the LGPL. I can understand that they are not in the list of Approved Licenses (it would allow even proprietary software to use the patent without royalties), however it is a Bad Thing to alienate the BSD and XFree folks from the GPL department of the Free Software community by not allowing them to reimplement something under their license. X and some BSD licensed code is even a part of the GNU project.
Salam-Shalom,
Werner
Werner Koch wrote:
Jan asked why GPL compatible licenses are not included.
It was meant like this:
Say I have programmed something and that is distributed under a GPL-compatible license. Now I want to add some routines that touch these patents. According to RedHats statement I am not allowed to do this undr the terms of their promise as my license is not the GPL but only GPL-compatible. Am I right?
Jan Wildeboer
On Wed, 2002-05-29 at 20:32, Jan Wildeboer wrote:
Werner Koch wrote:
Jan asked why GPL compatible licenses are not included.
It was meant like this: Say I have programmed something and that is distributed under a GPL-compatible license. Now I want to add some routines that touch these patents. According to RedHats statement I am not allowed to do this undr the terms of their promise as my license is not the GPL but only GPL-compatible. Am I right?
If it is a GPL compatible license not listed under RedHat's 'promise', then I think it's unfourtunately so.
sadly, rui
On Wed, 2002-05-29 at 21:32, Jan Wildeboer wrote:
Werner Koch wrote:
Jan asked why GPL compatible licenses are not included.
It was meant like this:
Say I have programmed something and that is distributed under a GPL-compatible license. Now I want to add some routines that touch these patents. According to RedHats statement I am not allowed to do this undr the terms of their promise as my license is not the GPL but only GPL-compatible. Am I right?
And where's the problem?
Simply: build a separate GPLed source file that contains the routines you have to put under a GPL license because of the patent, and then link all together (if the rest is GPL compatible it is not a problem), the only thing that will change is that you will have to redistribute the whole work under the terms of the GPL license (but the single part of code that are BSD/X11/whatever will retain their own license).
Simo.
El Wed, May 29, 2002 at 08:37:12PM +0200, Werner Koch deia:
Jan asked why GPL compatible licenses are not included. This would include the reformed BSD one and the LGPL. I can understand that they are not in the list of Approved Licenses (it would allow even proprietary software to use the patent without royalties), however it
I'm confused about this.
Can't I redistribute a library under LGPL or a work that uses the library, under the LGPL itself if a patent would prevent someone from distributing a work that uses the library and is not licensed under LGPL?.
I mean, in case RH added LGPL to the list of Approved Licenses, would that mean that people who kept the LGPL would enjoy the RF patent license, and people who linked the library with nonfree software would need a separate patent license from RH, or couldn't do it?. Or the LGPL does not permit that, and therefore no library that infringed the patent could be distributed under LGPL ?
Anyway, I think the BSD license would allow such works using the library (or whatever), so could RH include the BSD in the Approved Licenses, and still their competitors could not distribute software using RH's patents in propietary software?. But they could distribute nonfree software without the BSD code and have the user link to the BSD code (but then at least business users would ifnringe RH's patents).
How much wrong am I?.
is a Bad Thing to alienate the BSD and XFree folks from the GPL department of the Free Software community by not allowing them to reimplement something under their license. X and some BSD licensed code is even a part of the GNU project.
And it is a bad moment to do it, since the debate on swpats in Europe could suffer from people assuming swpats are ok for free software because RH applies for them.
But then I guess not all information about the reason behind this decision is public. It is sad, anyway.
El Wed, May 29, 2002 at 05:48:58PM +0200, Bernhard Reiter deia:
Note 2: In my eyes Software on which a patent exists does indeed take away the second freedom to study how the program works. What is studying worth if you cannot use your learned knowledge (ideas not the code) to implement something similiar and use it to earn money.
I think you hit the basic contradiction in software patents:
A patent is a temporary monopoly on commercial use of a machine in exchange for publication of information on the machine.
When the machine is itself information, the (rough) definition of patent above collapses:
A patent is a temporary monopoly on commercial use of information in exchange for publication of the information.
you can't publish information (i.e. make information available for the public to use) and forbid its commercial use, because then you get only noncommercial use, which is both very difficult to isolate, and contrary to the intention of patents (that's why "industrial aplicability" is required).
All kinds of nonsense can follow from this contradiction. Information just does not work that way. They say information wants to be free, and some might not agree, but the least you can think is information wants to be. Software patents pretend information to be _and_ not to be, this is the question.