Re:Theo de Raadt on LLVM license change
by icebraining on Saturday October 01, 2016 @11:31AM
(#12618265)
So if you disagree that companies should be allowed to patent software, mathematics and processes, you might not pick a license that validates the existence of those patents.
This sounds absurd to me. Software patents don't go away because one stops believing in them. Either the courts enforce them or not.
Sure, but I see the idea as a kind of boycott/protest. I disagree with patents, mainly software patents, consequently I will never use a license that consider patents.
That's not how laws work. At all. Even the GPLv3 (authored by one of the biggest activists against software patents) has clauses relating to software patents -- because they are a legitimate threat to software freedom and need to be addressed. Just because you don't like patents doesn't make the problem go away -- in fact by ignoring it you're making the problem worse because then your code's license has no protection for your users.
Re:Theo de Raadt on LLVM license change
by icebraining on Saturday October 01, 2016 @12:46PM
(#12618656)
But a boycott is supposed to help the cause, no? All you're doing is preventing a lot of people from using your code from fear that you'll sue them - some of which who might end up using an alternative from a company that holds and supports patents.
While better than the GPL, version 2 and 3, in the sense that it's shorter, the Apache 2 license is still much more complex than the ISC or the BSD/MIT licenses. Another part of the issue, for some developers at least, is that the Apache 2 license sort of acknowledges that software patents are a thing. So if you disagree that companies should be allowed to patent software, mathematics and processes, you might not pick a license that validates the existence of those patents.