On Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 10:25:49PM +0000, Julian Mehnle wrote:
It is not my intention at all to bind the openspf site/persons into the
OPL by simply using the mark.
I hadn't assumed it was. I just want to be near completely certain about
the implications, intended or not. This "Open Patent" certification mark
obviously isn't very well tested yet.
Having the non-final OPL even mentioned in the standards is probably not the
best idea.
I've removed it from the standard, except for a note soliciting help
in making a patent license in the Miscellaneous notes section.
That should make things even MORE certain. :-)
So our use of the "Open Patent" certification mark would mean a change
(i.e. a restriction) in how people are allowed to use the marked pieces of
software, right?
Concretely, it would prevent people from combining a GPL-licensed software
(e.g. postfix-policyd-spf-perl) with another GPL-licensed software that
contains non-OPL-free (but GPL-compatible) patents/PLIPs, right?
Yes and no.
It would not prevent people from making this newly combined work. It
would prevent them from calling this newly combined work an Open Patent
work.
This is just like Open Source and the BSD license. You can publish a
piece of code, license it under the BSD license, and call the software
Open Source code.
Someone else can take that code, make some proprietary modifications,
and redistribute it as BSD plus proprietary-stuff. But the resulting
work, (even though it contains BSD code), can no longer be called Open
Source.
But all the while the original work, and continued Open Source
development of it, can continue to be referred to as an Open Source
work.
So we could remove the mark later if we find it
to be a problem. (I'm not expecting it to, but you never know. "Open
Patent" not well tested yet, yadda yadda.)
Right. This is roughly analogous to calling something "Open Source" or
"OSI-Certified Open Source", and later removing the mark, (either
because you modified the code so that that was no longer the case, or
because you discovered the rules no longer applied due to a
misunderstanding, or because you just didn't want to use the mark any
more.)
You're not using the mark in bad faith, (ie, trying to claim something
that's not true, where that claim would bind you somehow.). Everything
you're now claiming was true to begin with.
Thanks for explaining it all to me.
Thanks for asking the questions! (It's always good to understand what
things aren't really clear and fix them--Your confusions and questions
convinced me to remove that main reference to the OPL.)
Assuming the two assumptions of mine above are correct, I have no
objections against marking postfix-policyd-spf-{perl,python} and
the "Tools" page as "Open Patent" as you requested (minus the "TM"s
perhaps).
(I'm fine with not having the TM's.)
What do others think?
(whistles innocently.)
--
Mark Shewmaker
mark(_at_)primefactor(_dot_)com
-------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org/
Archives at http://archives.listbox.com/spf-discuss/current/
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your
subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=735
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com