RedHat and software patents
Alceste Scalas
tjoad at gmx.it
Sun May 26 11:55:58 UTC 2002
On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 12:35:14PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> The sourcecode definitely has now been published so it is
> covered by the GPL. For this reason, the author grants royalty
> free use by anybody. He cannot earn money from this idea.
Well, I don't agree...
I think that Red Hat could say something like this:
"if you want to make a derived work from our GNU GPL'ed
software, then you are free to do it (of course, you have to
respect the GNU GPL terms). You can use/modify the version of
our patented idea that we have implemented under the GNU GPL,
without fees.
But if you want to reimplement our patented idea on another
program, then you have to ask us for a permission; then we may
require that you choose between these:
a. you release your work under the GNU GPL (if you want to
use our patent without paying fees);
b. you pay a royalty (if you want to use another license
and/or release a proprietary program)."
I think that it could be quite a realistic hypothesis --- and it
could be the first software patent that could be used to support
Free Software :-)
Regards,
alceste, who doesn't like software patents anyway
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