Roy Badami <roy(_at_)gnomon(_dot_)org(_dot_)uk> writes:
The licenses may well be technically incompatible, but that effects
no-one but Microsoft. You, as the distributor of courier, will only
be distributing code under the GPL. You will _not_ be granting rights
under the Sender ID patent grant, and more to the point you will not
(I assume) be making any patent claims on Sender ID.
That is *not* correct. Two of the rights which the GPL licence gives
to recipients (ie those to whom the software is distributed) are to
1) Be allowed to modify (or have modified) the software.
2) Be allowed to distribute the software, either the original as
received, or as modified in 1) above.
The patent grant (as currently on the table) is incompatibe with this,
as you (the software author and patent licencee) do not have the
rights under the patent licence to grant recipients the right to
modify and distribute that modified software - to do so they would
need to obtain a licence from the patent holder. The GPL is clear that
if you cannot grant these rights (eg because it is not yours to give)
to recipients then you cannot distribute the software under GPL.