Re: [tlug] [C&C] Bill Gates and the GPL , let the flames begin

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Christian Horn writes:

 > What was produced free should stay so IMHO.

Keep your "should"s and your definition of "free" for your own code,
please.  (That's what "freedom" means, you see.)

Brian Chandler writes:

 > Yes, precisely what you wrote is still yours. But those other bits you 
 > meant to but never quite got round to writing might be there now - 
 > except that you have to pay money to use them.

As you point out, you can rewrite them yourself.

 > Actually the beneficiary of your generosity has probably patented
 > them, so you don't even have the option of writing them yourself
 > any more.

Irrelevant, for two reasons.  First, the GPLv3 doesn't prevent
downstream from patenting their inventions, it prevents them from
redistributing yours.  Microsoft's lawyers clearly believe that GPLv2
doesn't even go that far.  Second, in software there's always more
than one way to do it, and (the Zen of Python notwithstanding) the
other ways are often well-known.  You *can*, in almost all cases, just
rewrite it.  Even RSA had workarounds within five years IIRC, and that
is one of the patents that everybody concedes clears the bars[1] of
originality and unobviousness.

The treatment of of patents by a license should pretty much be ignored
unless your name is Ivan Boris Molotov; it's almost irrelevant to OSS,
because (1) most patents are held by nondistributors of the infringing
software, and (2) OSS distributors (with the exceptions of Mr. Molotov
and Satoshi Ungawarui Nagatani) don't hold any patents with which they
can countersue.

Footnotes: 
[1]  I don't mean "last call", TLUGgers!