Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751973AbWI3V0c (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:26:32 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751977AbWI3V0c (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:26:32 -0400 Received: from warden-p.diginsite.com ([208.29.163.248]:34748 "HELO warden.diginsite.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S1751973AbWI3V0b (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:26:31 -0400 Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 14:11:57 -0700 (PDT) From: David Lang X-X-Sender: dlang@dlang.diginsite.com To: James Bottomley cc: tridge@samba.org, linux-kernel Subject: Re: GPLv3 Position Statement In-Reply-To: <1159559443.9543.23.camel@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> Message-ID: References: <1159498900.3880.31.camel@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> <17692.46192.432673.743783@samba.org> <1159515086.3880.79.camel@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> <17692.57123.749163.204216@samba.org> <1159559443.9543.23.camel@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1533 Lines: 29 On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, James Bottomley wrote: >> That caveat is important, and changes it from a misleading statement >> to a true statement. It also is a statement which is true for the >> GPLv2, which makes it not such a useful statement to make when >> considering the relative merits of the two licenses. > > Well, this is the whole point. Today, you can distribute GPLv2 packages > without much patent worry ... if you develop GPLv2 packages, that's > different, but if you simply act as a conduit, you're not going to have > too much trouble.. If I take the broad interpretation that I give a > licence to every patent practised by every package I distribute, then I > don't know what my liability might be until I've done an IP assessment > of everything that's distributed from the website. That means not just > what I'm working on, but also what support put up there to assist a > customer, and also what the engineers are putting up in their private > areas. this is especially relavent for companies that have formerly been willing to act as mirrors for free software projects. now the act of mirroring debian means that any patent they own could be comprimised by a random debian developer adding a patch to any of 19000 packages that implements that patent David Lang - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/