Re: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux
Andrej Presern (andrejp@luz.fe.uni-lj.si)
Sun, 20 Dec 1998 15:54:10 +0100
Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
> > QUESTION: Say IBM wrote their own mmap.c replacement with no GPL code in
> > it. Can they distribute a binary kernel image made with that mmap.c
> > without distributing the source to that small program? I mean, can that
> > particular mmap.c have a non-gpl license? In other words, they distribute
> > only the source for the GPL parts of the code?
>
> That is not the problem at all.
>
> The problem: if IBM supplies 24x7 support for Linux, they will want
> to tweak the code to help their customers. No problem, and it falls
> under the GPL of course. What if IBM uses an IBM patent? It would be
> very bad (from their point of view) if that somehow gave everyone
> rights to the patent.
>
> IBM needs a way to tightly bind a patent license to the source code.
> Without that, they are afraid to contribute. IBM might even want to
> specifically tie patents to Linux. (not also gcc, HURD, emacs...)
>
> It is unfortunate that the FSF doesn't hold any patents. I don't think
> that they like patents at all, but they need some so that they can trade.
> (if anything, patent issues could give GPL code an advantage over BSD code)
What kind of patents would IBM like to bind to the source code? It seems
to me that IBM is trying to do something that contradicts the very
essence of GPL as GPL is set out to make sure the object of the licence
stays free, usable and available for everyone while patents are set out
to make sure that the availability (but most of all usability) of the
object of the patent stays limited to a selected few.
Andrej
--
Andrej Presern, andrejp@luz.fe.uni-lj.si
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