Roy Badami wrote:
Ok, here's my argument:
(1) Imagine you don't sign the patent license. In that case, the
license clearly has no effect on you. The question is, does the
existence of a patent claim prevent you from distributing under
the GPL anyway.
It is possible to interpret the GPL such that it does, since you
are not in a position to offer rights to redistribute, although
it's not clear (to me) that this is what the GPL intends.
This may even be the correct interpretation of the GPL, however I
call it an 'extreme' position because under that position it is
also unlawful to distribute the Linux kernel, since it seems
likely from recent reparts that there are a substantial number of
patent claims against it. In fact, this is likely to be true of
most non-trivial GPL'd software.
(2) Now imagine that you _have_ signed the Sender ID license. The
Sender ID license doesn't require you to place any restrictions on
the recipient of the software, as far as I can see the situation
with GPL compliance is no different to (1)
While my understanding of the principles behind the GPL makes it
perfectly clear to me that most any license is going to run afoul of it.
I do not see how it is my understanding of the GPL or yours that matter's.
What matters is:
whether the authors of the GPL or other FOSS license beleive
they have a problem,
whether the authors of FOSS licensed MTA's beleive they
have a problem
whether those distributing software under the GPL or other
FOSS license beleive there is a problem.
This is not a game - atleast not for those of us who are not
lawyers. Finding a "loophole" is something well meaning people do after
they have unintentionally gotten themselves into a bind.
I would like to sucker Microsoft into a fight they can't win, but
trying to push a standard into that position is irresponsible.