- From: Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:58:47 -0400
- To: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>
- Cc: www-style@w3.org
On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Boris Zbarsky<bzbarsky@mit.edu> wrote: > That's not what Mozilla has said. I stand corrected, then. > IANAL and I don't officially speak for > Mozilla on this, but I believe what "they" (we?) have said is that for us to > ship a patented format it must at a minimum be possible for others to then > redistribute our code without having to renegotiate the patent license. But not modify it? > There may also be something about field-of-use restrictions that I'm not > qualified to comment on. I was basing my statement on this post by Robert O'Callahan: "This is correct. We (Mozilla) could not accept field-of-use restrictions." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008Nov/0162.html I understood it (and his explanations in the same thread) to mean that any patent would have to be licensed under terms allowing free redistribution *and* modification, including modification of the relevant code for purposes not related to web browsing (e.g., a non-networked desktop application to convert font formats). Which Monotype is apparently willing to do, so I don't think it's an issue at this point anyway. > But being "patented" by no means immediately rules > out anything. What matters is the patent license, not the fact of being > patented. Yes, sorry. Of course by "patented" I meant "patented and not licensed under terms compatible with the GPL or similar".
Received on Monday, 22 June 2009 20:59:20 UTC