On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 06:00:42PM +0200, Norbert Bollow wrote:
I would argue that a GPL implemention is not important to
interoperability testing as long as there is a BSD-licensed
implementation. In fact, to the extent that all or most of the
commercial products are based off of the same BSD-licensed code base,
this can actually *improve* interoperability. (I may have been
awarded the 2006 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software, but
if my goal were to make sure that specification was going to get
widely adopted, I'd use a BSD license, not a GPl license, for the
reference implementation.)
I don't disagree with anything that you wrote, but the point here
is that if there's a patent with GPL-incompatible licensing, you
don't have permission to link that BSD-licensed code into a
GPL-licensed program and distribute the result.
And I would argue that the above issue is not a matter of concern to
the IETF. Having a reference implementation to encourage adoption of
the spec, that is of IETF's concern. The issue of GPL requirements
is, I would argue, Not Our Problem.
- Ted
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