- From: Lance Heller <lheller@ttsi-tul.com>
- Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 17:10:30 -0600
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
FSF's objections center around Section 3 of the W3C's proposed patent policy. Item 3 of that section says that the royalty-free license may "may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and to what is required by the Recommendation". That is a "field of use" restriction. The problem is the interaction of such a "field of use" restriction with Section 7 of GPL. Under Section 7, the "field of use" restriction is a "conditions are imposed on you [the distributor of GPL'ed software] that contradict the conditions of this License". The "conditions of this license" require, for example, that those receiving distributions of GPL'ed software have the right to run the program for any purpose (Section 0), the right to modify it for any purpose (Section 2), etc. Any of these "purposes" could easily practice the teachings of the patent beyond what the "field of use" restriction allows. Lance Heller -- 047CF18A: 55F1 FF14 0620 1B7F A82E B5F8 3C94 02F7 047C F18A 8B7C7901: 424F 17DB 5683 6A18 CDD6 6C65 5E1E 9F86 8B7C 7901 5F648A7E: 8B86 24FB 1CD9 C997 C2A3 9E5D 16BD 5F7F 5F64 8A7E
Received on Friday, 3 January 2003 18:07:59 UTC