4 ms·

Literally not true. You’d just revert to BSD if you sued. So same protection as now.

0xbear 9y ago
Literally is true. In the presence of patents BSD license alone (and MIT, too) would basically mean you’re infringing on their IP, and they can and will bring action against you on the basis of your use of their software, even if your legal action against them was over completely unrelated patents.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Not sure what you're trying to say as your phrasing is jumbled but the BSD licence offers zero protection from their patents now. They can sue you whenever they like now. This is, of course, true of any other OSS and patent holding company.
jjnoakes 9y ago
Many argue that the difference is between the old explicit grant (which was one-sided) and the new implicit grant (which is more two-sided). Reverting to BSD doesn't remove the fact that the explicit grant was revoked, so the real comparison of one sued is BSD with no inplicit grant to MIT with an implicit grant.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Implicit grants have very little case law and what law there is doesn't look too useful for people in this case (the patent(s) would have to be extremely specifically applicable to the code, which most patents are designed not to be). So I trust implicit grants much less than explicit.
  - jjnoakes 9y ago
    Right, if they were equal grants, I would too. But they aren't, that's the point.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      It's a principled stand for sure, and I can respect that, but it also means that in practice you get less protection. Like, I'd love to live in a world where patent protection wasn't even an issue but we don't. So in this situation we end up with less protection due to compatibility concerns. Given we do live in a world where software patents are valuable to companies and they won't all want to give blanket irrevocable licenses... there has to be a way for business to do that and protect users of the software. The patent grant FB did was a (flawed) attempt at that.
      - jjnoakes 9y ago
        Not sure how the topic veered; this thread was about the difference between BSD+Patents - Patents vs MIT and the two being less equal (in my opinion) than first posited, because the +Patents and -Patents don't cancel out to equal the implicit patent grant of MIT. Even if you believe the implicit grant to be weak, or Facebook's Patent grant to be better than an implicit grant, the above discussion stands independently of those things.

Literally is true. In the presence of patents BSD license alone (and MIT, too) would basically mean you’re infringing on their IP, and they can and will bring action against you on the basis of your use of their software, even if your legal action against them was over completely unrelated patents.

abritinthebay 9y ago
Not sure what you're trying to say as your phrasing is jumbled but the BSD licence offers zero protection from their patents now. They can sue you whenever they like now. This is, of course, true of any other OSS and patent holding company.

jjnoakes 9y ago

Many argue that the difference is between the old explicit grant (which was one-sided) and the new implicit grant (which is more two-sided). Reverting to BSD doesn't remove the fact that the explicit grant was revoked, so the real comparison of one sued is BSD with no inplicit grant to MIT with an implicit grant.

abritinthebay 9y ago
Implicit grants have very little case law and what law there is doesn't look too useful for people in this case (the patent(s) would have to be extremely specifically applicable to the code, which most patents are designed not to be). So I trust implicit grants much less than explicit.
- jjnoakes 9y ago
  Right, if they were equal grants, I would too. But they aren't, that's the point.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    It's a principled stand for sure, and I can respect that, but it also means that in practice you get less protection. Like, I'd love to live in a world where patent protection wasn't even an issue but we don't. So in this situation we end up with less protection due to compatibility concerns. Given we do live in a world where software patents are valuable to companies and they won't all want to give blanket irrevocable licenses... there has to be a way for business to do that and protect users of the software. The patent grant FB did was a (flawed) attempt at that.
    - jjnoakes 9y ago
      Not sure how the topic veered; this thread was about the difference between BSD+Patents - Patents vs MIT and the two being less equal (in my opinion) than first posited, because the +Patents and -Patents don't cancel out to equal the implicit patent grant of MIT. Even if you believe the implicit grant to be weak, or Facebook's Patent grant to be better than an implicit grant, the above discussion stands independently of those things.