On Sun, 2006-11-12 at 14:11 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > 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. ---- I believe that the FSF / FSLC was more concerned with a potential violation of section 7 of the GPL (v2) but since they (Eben Moglen) have been invited to review the complete contractual agreement... http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2168151/novells-opens-microsoft we are certain to know what the official position of the FSF/FSLC is going to be. Craig
