7 ms·

No company that intends to use software patents as an offensive weapon, indeed.

• johncolanduoni 10y ago
  The Apache 2.0 provides a patent grant, and the whole reason they were looking for a new license was to add a patent grant. So if Apple wants to sue anyone who uses LLVM for patent infringement, why are they spending so much money on lawyers to figure out how to switch to a license with a patent grant?
  • cyphar 10y ago
    The Apache 2.0 provides an uneven patent grant. Specifically, it's directed from users to the developers. The GPLv3 makes the patent grants much more copyleft in style to ensure that users cannot be attacked by patents from developers as well.
    • johncolanduoni 10y ago
      Apache 2.0: > each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. GPLv3: > Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version. The two licenses are definitely not identical on patents, but both are pretty clear that they provide protection to users from developers, insofar as the original code and any modifications downstream were licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. You're right that there's no copyleft, but that doesn't reverse the direction of the patent grant.
      • Iv 10y ago
        The GPLv3 has several paragraphs on patents. Here are some parts you did not mention: > If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license, and the Corresponding Source of the work is not available for anyone to copy, free of charge and under the terms of this License, through a publicly available network server or other readily accessible means, then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so available, or (2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this particular work, or (3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients. “Knowingly relying” means you have actual knowledge that, but for the patent license, your conveying the covered work in a country, or your recipient's use of the covered work in a country, would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that country that you have reason to believe are valid. > If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered work and works based on it. > A patent license is “discriminatory” if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.
        • johncolanduoni 10y ago
          There's no doubt that the GPLv3 provides broader patent protection for users, but both licenses put the "protect users from developer's patent claims" first. To be honest if you're hostile to software patents in general (which I am, and the GPL sure as hell is), the part of the Apache 2.0 license's patent clause that prevents users from flipping around the patent claims seems like a non-issue.
• coldtea 10y ago
  No company that values its patents and will defend them in court, period. (Because the way you phrased it implies this only holds for patent trolls).