[Freeswitch-users] MPL and licensing

Steve Underwood steveu at coppice.org
Sat Jun 20 18:52:49 PDT 2009


David Sugar wrote:
> There are no legal uncertainties with respect to patents in GPL v3.  You
> cannot assert them in code you license under it.  There was ambiguities
> in GPL v2 in this respect which some companies liked.  I prefer to deal
> with honest companies rather than those that are anti-social or might
> choose legal ambush later, so any that feel they cannot accept the
> greater legal certainty of GPL v3 in this respect are probably companies
> that I would not choose to have any kind of relationship with anyway ;).
>   
If that is true, why are there some notes on the FSF web site trying to 
clarify what is not well stated about patents in GPL3 itself? You are 
fooling yourself if you think lawyers are generally comfortable with 
GPL3. I'm talking about lawyers who were perfectly happy with GPL2.

I know of some cases where large companies have paid outsourced 
developers to contribute to open source projects, specifically so there 
are no possible legal ramifications related to their own patent 
portfolio. That's a really messed up licence.

Steve





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