Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 25 May 2002 13:53:41 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: patent on O_ATOMICLOOKUP [Re: [PATCH] loopable tmpfs (2.4.17)] |
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On Sat, 25 May 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote: > > I'd like to take this opportunity to take a turn back towards the original > issue: supposing that Ingo's/Red Hat's patented extension to the dcache is > accepted into the kernel. Would not the GPL's patent trap provision > prevent Red Hat from distributing the result, unless Red Hat also provides > a license for the patent permitting unrestricted use *regardless of > commercial or noncommercial use* of the patent in the context of the GPL'd > code?
Absolutely.
Patents are bad, but I think peoples "charge the red flag" reactions to them are also bad.
I think it was Alan who just suggested to Andrea that he'd ask for an explicit piece of paper _saying_ it was ok, instead of paniccing.
I don't much like patents, but we're forced to live with them. I suspect the best thing we can do is to use them as well as we can. Which is why I don't personally think it's a problem that RedHat, FSMlabs etc get patents.
Can those patents result in trouble? Sure as hell. But let's put it this way: I'm a _lot_ happier about a RedHat/FSMlabs patent that gets licensed to GPL users than I am about a patent by somebody who would want to screw with the GPL.
Linus
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