Title: RE: [Ethereal-dev] Request: Change the allowed license of plugins
You announce the discomfort of your lawyers as if it is a broadly based legal opinion. Personally, I am unconcerned with their discomfort. ;)
Perhaps other lawyers have differing opinions. (Perhaps? What am I thinking, of COURSE other lawyers will have differing opinions!)
What really matters is the opinion of the court.
I worry that these lawyers could cause us to assume a legal position which is detrimental, and uncalled for. Do we really need to do this?
BTW: I am on the copyright list, due to a trivial change I made to the Windows code. I intend to subscribe to the opinion of the heavy contributors, whatever that turns out to be.
-----Original Message-----
From: ddutt@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddutt@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 9:37 AM
To: Esh, Andrew
Cc: 'Hannes Gredler'; Ronnie Sahlberg; ethereal-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [Ethereal-dev] Request: Change the allowed license of
plugins
Hi Andrew/Hannes,
Esh, Andrew writes:
> On the other hand, releasing information about patented material does not
> invalidate the patent. In fact, the opposite is exactly what the patent
As I have said in my earlier responses, GPL does contain text that makes
lawyers very nervous about the ability to enforce patents. You're right that
releasing information about patents doesn't invalidate the patent. At the IETF,
we see companies typically release proprietary information in an attempt to
standardize it. But in that case, there is no language (as in GPL) that
makes lawyers uncomfortable. If lawyers are uncomfortable, we engineers don't
get to release stuff back into public domain.
> We should also consider that a decoder is not an implementation or use of
> the patented idea, just an illustration or _expression_. Being able to decode
> the protocol does not mean any value is being derived from it.
It does not matter what we consider. It is the lawyers engaged in IPR issues
that interpret the licenses and decide what it says about patent infringement.
But, if we make the change that I'm suggesting and companies then release
decoders for proprietary protocols, I think the user community of Ethereal
benefits a lot. It also frees companies from worrying about patent issues and
can then release source code for the decoders as well under a different license
such as IBM's or Mozilla's.
Dinesh
--
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe