On Fri, 3 Jan 2020 00:13:16 +0800 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
On Thursday, January 2, 2020, Hendrik Boom hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 02, 2020 at 12:28:03AM +0000, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
IBM takes its responsibility as a world-leader extremely seriously, and they're providing an extremely sneaky royalty-free patent license for POWER ISA, which says, "you get free unrestricted use of these patents as long as you don't ever try to assert a patent - ever - against us, IBM".
*that's* clever :)
Aren't there similar terms in the GPL3? Except of course you get to use the software instead of any patents?
i believe so. section 8 specifically mentions termination including patent grants.
however section 11 itself is dreadfully unclear.
l.
IANAL, but when I read the GPL3 I thought it was only patents relating to the SW in question whereas the POWER ISA agreement was more along the lines of "no suing for infringement ever". As in, when you DL the GPL3 SW you can check if it infringes, if yes then sue, if no then you can use it and be bound to the GPL3. If they change the SW so that it infringes then you can sue (if you aren't using the new version).
Sincerely, David