[XviD-devel] Re: License/legal discussions

[Jan Rychter]

>>>>> "Christoph" == Christoph Lampert <chl at math.uni-bonn.de> writes:
 Christoph> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, Jan Rychter wrote:
 >> Thank you, Christoph -- this is a *very* good summary of what we're
 >> discussing. I couldn't have phrased it better.

 Christoph> Thank you ;-)

I'm responding to a 3 weeks old post -- sorry about the delay. Holidays
and the CES show made for a serious disturbance.

 Christoph> From my discussion, also at gnu.misc.discuss, it seems that
 Christoph> the easiest and most-in-the-spirit-of-GPL solution is to
 Christoph> modify XviD's license to what we originally had intended:
 Christoph> modification and distribution should be allowed under GPL,
 Christoph> except that when we said "GPL", we didn't think of the "no
 Christoph> patents clause". We could therefore modify XviD's license to
 Christoph> be "GPL, with exception of the patent restriction which is
 Christoph> replaced by somethink like "Usage and/or distribution may
 Christoph> need a license, which every user and distributor has to care
 Christoph> about him- or herself."

 Christoph> Would you, Jan (and you lawyers), think that this is
 Christoph> sufficient? 

Yes, that is exactly what we are seeking. Only Section 7 of the GPL
causes problems.

You might want to protect XviD against someone deliberately contributing
code that is patented by _him_, though. I am not sure how to do that and
whether it is really necessary, perhaps it just results from the rest of
the GPL.

 Christoph> I didn't find any precedent on this, it seems that nobody
 Christoph> seems to be aware of the stuff. I know however, that
 Christoph> e.g. libstdc++ has a modified GPL as licence to get rid of
 Christoph> some limitations in LGPL, so it might not be impossible to
 Christoph> just combine GPL with other stuff as it's needed.

Yes, it seems indeed that very few people are aware of the patent
issues. Most discussions just concentrate on the (already beaten to
death many times) redistribute-the-source issue.

best regards,
--Jan