On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 4:08 AM, Alexei Podtelezhnikov
<address@hidden> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Werner LEMBERG <
address@hidden> wrote:
> 3. Grant of Patent License.
>
Do freetype authors hold or have they filed for a patent? Don't you
need it first before granting any patent license? This is one strange
and curious discussion thread without a patent at hand. There is a
difference between patent and copyright. Patent means royalties,
copyright does not.
Patents mean a bit more than royalties, but let's not digress.
The point of a patent clause in the software license is to protect users and distributors of the software, not authors.
More specifically, an Apache 2.0 -style clause only protects from sub-marine patents being contributed to a project, and being asserted later.
(for example, after the company who submitted the related contribution went through a change of ownership).
That doesn't protect from random third-parties who never contributed anything from claiming infringement from patent they own, but absolutely nothing can protect against that, even if you release your code under the public domain.
But at least, when you see such a patent clause in the license, you have a minimal guarantee that you won't get easily attacked in the future by the original authors, independently on the way you use the software (which may or may not align with their current or future personal/business goals).
That's the main reason why so many major open source licenses have added them over time: Apache, GPL and MPL. Think about it, even the FSF thinks they're a good thing.
That's why I think adding such a clause is a good thing for the project's users.
There is no need to change a license. I do not think so.