Re: [pgsql-www] Software Patents

Bruce Momjian wrote:

>
>Good distinction.  It is a lot easier to get agreement on being
>"patent-free" rather than "anti-patent".
>
>
>
Hi Bruce and others;

No fundamental disagreement from me.  Just a question about gray area in
this distinction:

How do we know we are patent free?  How is not asking for appropriate
licenses for patents when they surface not an anti-patent stance?

BTW, wrt the ARC patent.  Given IBM's involvement in certain open source
projects, such as OpenAFS and others, and given the way that they have
worked with the community to license the patents, I think that it is
entirely possible that they might have granted a mutually assured
distruction-type license to the patent.  In this sort of license, they
allow people to use the patent provided that they don't sue over patent
infringement in the software.  This type of license is written into the
IBM Public License (See OpenAFS) in drafts years before similar language
ended up in the Apache license.

A couple notes, however:  Such licenses would have made this project
GPL-incompatible (at least in the opinion of the FSF), given their
statements of the new Apache license, and as such would have pushed the
project away from its BSD-licensed roots (though I personally have no
problem with the current Apache license).  It is also possible that IBM
could have made another exception for GPL'd software independent of
this.  Of course, IANAL.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting