3 ms·
> If you publish this under patent grant, why did you patent it in the first place? It could be part of a defensive patent strategy. If they successfully rece
by xenophonf 11y ago
> If you publish this under patent grant, why did you patent it in the first place?
It could be part of a defensive patent strategy. If they successfully received a patent for that, then it makes it that much harder for a malicious third party to troll them. And if you ask me, turning around and publishing the patent under the APL demonstrates good faith to the /libre/ software community (it's a GPLv3-compatible license, no less), so that's a strategic win, too.
- vog 11y agoWow, this is an interesting strategy. To summarize, just to make sure I got this right: 1. They make use the patent protection clauses via APL (and also GPLv3) 2. They use to to protect it from their own patent Result: Their patent ensures that all Free Software implementations must use a strong Copyleft license - APL, GPLv3, AGPLv3 or similar. (Or they have to try to get a patent license from MS.) What's still unclear to me: Does it affect other implementations? Assume that Clang/LLVM wants to implement "syntax trivia". Will they have to use exactly their implementation, and thus have to switch from their BSD-style license to APL or (A)GPL?