Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 22 Dec 1998 15:46:25 +0000 | From | "Patrick R. Hickel" <> | Subject | Missed point of "clean up the license of Linux" |
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Richard Stallman and the rest of the news group:
I know I'm going to get a certain amount of flames over this but what the heck. Maybe we can get some good out of it. Before you break out the flame throwers please make sure you read at least the last paragraph.
I think some folks may have missed the point on why IBM or some other large company might want to "clean up the license".
Here are two areas where I feel a cleanup of the PGL might be in GNU's best interest.
1) Suppose someone from Deep Pockets Inc. contributes a fix for a small bug in the kernal. At some other time someone from NoName-NoMoney Inc. also contributes to the Kernal code. If the code contributed by the NoName-NoMoney folks is found to violate the patent of some third company, what is to keep that third company from sueing for damages everyone who contributed and Deep Pockets Inc. getting hammered legally/financially for something they didn't do?
Deep Pockets Inc. may want to be the PERFECT GNU citizen, but can they afford the exposure of contributing code to a large shared project like the Linux kernal? They may want to contribute time, people and systems, but can they afford the risk?
Is there any way we could modify the license so that our friends in Deep Pockets Inc. can limit their exposure to only the code they contribute and not anything done in the entire kernal? This would make corporate envolvement in any large GPL licensed project much easier to sell to corporate legal staffs. Maybe something like having each contributer accept exclusive legal responsibility for the code they contribute. I don't know, I'm not a Lawyer.
2) Suppose Deep Pockets Inc. enjoys a real market advantage because they have the patent or copyright on some general use item like the worlds greatest compression algorithm. They would like to allow the use of this algorithm in only selected GPL'd projects. They don't want their competitors to be allowed to use this without paying a license fee, but they want to give permanent approval for GPL use on a project by project basis.
Right now release for GPL use is kind of all or nothing. Code for any GLP'd project can be shared by any other GPL'd project. While this is a great goal, it is not helping GNU with Corporate Patent/Copyright holders. Could we modify the GPL to allow this kind of limited release? Remember our choices here are we can gain the right to some limited use or have no use at all.
If our friends in Deep Pockets Inc. have no intention of ever marketing a product for which GPL'd ProjectX wants to use the algorithm, they could grant that project a permanent Right to Use their Patent or Copyright but still not allow GPL'd ProjectZ to use it, because ProjectZ is in direct competition with Deep Pockets Inc's main cash cow.
As an example of this case, let's say Deep Pockets Inc. is a disk manufacturer and they have their compression algorithm in firmware on each of their disk drives. They want to give permanent permission to use this compression in the GPL'd Linux ppp networking code. The only thing they really do not want to allow is using their algorithm to make compressed file systems on their competitors disk drive products not even with GPL'd code. Right now, releasing that algorithm for GPL use does not allow that type of end use restriction.
These are just a couple areas where "Cleaning up the License" might do us all good. I'm sure there are many other little tweeks where we (The Corporate world, GNU, and Open Source) could mutually benefit. If we can somehow find a way to limit corporate responsibility/exposure and allow a little bit of granularity in control of code released for GPL use we could greatly enhanse the idea of Corporate envolvement and active assistance/participation in GPL'd projects.
My intention here is not to argue for any particular changes to the GPL. Even the above examples are probably not the best choices. But what I'd like to do is move this discussion into more productive tracks. Specifically toword what changes could be made to the GPL that would serve to enhanse and improve our ability to attract corporate envolvement, participation and even funding for GPL'd projects while still not in any way weakening or diluting the goals of GNU/GPL. I realize this is one very narrow road with many pitfalls , but can we really say we have explored ALL the options? The GPL is very good, but is it as good as it can get?
-- Patrick R. Hickel Senior Computing Systems Administrator Boeing Information and Support Services P.O. Box 24346, Mail Stop 7H-AC Seattle Wa 98124-0346
hickel@puffball.ca.boeing.com
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