On Sun, 2006-11-12 at 13:41, Craig White wrote: > speculating on what patent rights Microsoft might wish to assert is > something I am hardly qualified to do but if you want to indulge > yourself, feel free. Your statement that this isn't going to play out > well suggests a pessimistic view of sorts. Which patent or when someone wants to assert it isn't the point. The problem I see is inherent in the GPL, which will prohibit _any_ distribution of covered content if there are any other restrictions. Section 2b says: "You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. and section 6 includes: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein." So including patent indemnity to your direct customers through some arrangement is not enough to permit GPL distribution to continue if in fact a patent covers any part of it and you cannot grant unlimited redistribution rights. Samba could easily be killed by any such patent claim regardless of the actual terms of licensing the patent. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
