From c6cc5a1220c2afdf9e313ff73f8177a2002a7457 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Richard Fontana Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 15:41:25 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] deleted MS coupon provision This commit deletes the paragraph in section 11 which was intended, as a hack on a feature of the Microsoft/Novell deal of 2006, to cause Microsoft patent licenses/covenants granted to Novell customers to be "automatically extended" to all downstream recipients of the software associated with the SLES certificates distributed by Microsoft pursuant to the deal. Historical evidence shows that this provision was taken somewhat seriously, and its cleverness and creativity are to be appreciated. However, it must be admitted that it has served no valid purpose in the past five years. To my knowledge no one has ever attempted to invoke the provision (or had need to invoke it) to argue for the existence of a patent license or covenant, and it would be exceedingly strange for anyone to have done so. The provision is worded generally, but it is tied to one deal between two specific companies and is intended to punish one particular company. Whatever its political value was in early 2007, the provision today is either a no-op or serves to intensify anti-GPLv3 FUD. It needs to go. One can view this provision as a sort of odd exception to the historical narrowing of the general patent license grant now contained in paragraphs 1-3 of section 11. Early public drafts of GPLv3 had featured a "pure distribution" approach to patent licensing. Whether that narrowing of the patent license grant was good policy or not is an open question, but it is worth noting that this anti-Microsoft provision would have been pointless had a pure-distribution patent licensing policy been retained. --- GPL.next | 10 +--------- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 9 deletions(-) diff --git a/GPL.next b/GPL.next index 4f1aec0..48bb590 100644 --- a/GPL.next +++ b/GPL.next @@ -387,7 +387,7 @@ patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version. - In the following three paragraphs, a "patent license" is any express + In the following two paragraphs, a "patent license" is any express agreement or commitment, however denominated, not to enforce a patent (such as an express permission to practice a patent or covenant not to sue for patent infringement). To "grant" such a patent license to a @@ -408,14 +408,6 @@ covered work in a country, or your recipient's use of the covered work in a country, would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that country that you have reason to believe are valid. - If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or -arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a -covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties -receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify -or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license -you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered -work and works based on it. - A patent license is "discriminatory" if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are -- 2.11.4.GIT