Paul Lambert says:
Here are a few comments on the discussion of Certicom's patents and some
ideas on how to possibly create new licensing approaches to support
"non-commercial" OpenPGP implementations.
It is good to see that Certicom decided to address the issue, and it
allows me to hope that an acceptable solution will be found.
Likewise, I'm aware of "$1 per copy maximum license fee" message from
Certicom, but haven't heard of ANY "royalty-free" offer or license.
....Certicom provides very reasonable licensing of the technology.
Possibly. I'll leave this point to others.
To date there is no "royalty-free" offer..............
And this is precisely the source of my concern, because it effectively
forbids freeware implementation of techlology, covered by Certicom and
thus forces the Net to embrace alternative, non-encumbered solutions.
Certicom is considering creating a "non-commercial use" license that would
promote the wider fielding of ECC technology. Certicom's broad range of
patents on ECC might limit the adoption of ECC technology in applications
like OpenPGP. A "non-commercial use" licenses would be introduced to
promote research and implementation of ECC technology. This would cover
most personal usage of OpenPGP.
Your comments on approaches to such a license would be appreciated.
In essence, I'd opt for a license that says something like "If you make
money with this - you share the loot with us, otherwise you can use it
for free." For example, receiving purchase orders secured with ECC,over
the Net - would be "commercial". On the other hand, submitting such an
order _for personal use_ (i.e. not a company buying gasoline for its
trucks) would _not_ be "commercial". Sending secure e-mail "You
haven't paid your bill of xx/xx/xxxx" is commercial, sending
personal e-mail - isn't...
I think there are examples - as there are many software pieces on the
Net that are free for personal (non-commercial) use, but cost money
if you want to use it for your business.
It should be fairly easy to draft such a license (but I admit I'm not
a lawyer - my training is simply to get the job done :-).
--
Regards,
Uri uri(_at_)watson(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com
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