Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 21:41:25 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: mikel@ocsinternet.com (Mikel) Cc: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan), tedm@toybox.placo.com (Ted Mittelstaedt), djohnson@acuson.com (David Johnson), freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Windriver, Slackware and FreeBSD Message-ID: <200104182141.OAA11291@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <3ADDED24.1649A20@ocsinternet.com> from "Mikel" at Apr 18, 2001 03:38:12 PM
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> This secnario begs the question: Should the BPL be modified to include > verbiage regarding, protecting FreeBSD from such poison patent issues? > Something that absolves fBSD from liabilities for using donated code which > may include these poison patents? This is a very common approach to the problem. Most of the Apple, Mozilla, etc. people have that in their license. The problem is that contributions are not really derivative works in FreeBSD, not does FreeBSD seek to control them as such. Unless there was an explicit assignment of rights to the FreeBSD Foundation (I could actually get behind this, if the trademark isse went away: it was how CSRG operated), there would really be no way to ensure that the rights being assigned belonged to the contributor instead of someone else. Software patents are almost impossible to audit to protect yourself; generally you only get to find out when you are sued. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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