Re: Shut it you tedious old windbag
GPLv2 is not that clear about patents.
I disagree. I think it's very clear.
Section 7 quite clearly says :-
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
Now although that doesn't actually prevent a malicious author publishing GPL code entirely of his own writing that also includes code under his own patents - a submarine patent attack - it wouldn't take much of a legal eagle to show that the author has unclean hands, and a case would assuredly fail.
The reason corporations - and some of their overly zealous spokespeople apparently - spread this FUD about GPL code being encumbered is because they don't want to comply with the source code publication for distributed binaries requirement.
Whilst I'm sure there are some organisations like that, the vast majority of the ones I've come across are simply parrotting memes they've read on the Internet; they're simply wrong, and they won't be told that they're wrong, for that would mean losing face...
Vic.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
