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RMS Blasts Sun's Open Source Patent Licensing

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the always-with-a-skeptical-eye dept.

cdlu writes "RMS takes Sun to task on its recent announcement that it is releasing 1,600 patents to the open source community. Among the major points, the license the patents are released under doesn't apply to patents, and Sun has not promised to not sue anyone using the technology within free software projects."

1 of 591 comments (clear)

  1. He's pretty much right by RLiegh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What truly scares me is the lack of long-term thinking among some open source projects that I keep track of with regards to the CDDL. The best example I can give is that I was reading the forums over at the ReactOS project; and OpenSolaris was mentioned. IIRC, No-one in the entire thread (which was about using some of OS in ROS) mentioned the patent angle...and given that ROS could easily be shut down over it, that omission alarmed me.

    OpenSolaris (Or any CDDL project) is a torpedo waiting to sink any GPL project whose members happen to think about looking at CDDL code.

    RMS is right on this, and he should be; he crafted the GPL during the days when reading AT&T code carried similar considerations.