Re: [Fsfe-uk] GPL and new EU antitrust proposals for licences

[Philip Hunt]

On Wednesday 03 December 2003  8:50 pm, James Heald wrote:
>
> The clause in the proposed exemption which particularly caught my eye is
> Article 5(1) condition (b):
>
> The exemption provided for in Article 2 shall not apply to any of the
> following obligations [[ie the following could be *invalid* on antitrust
> grounds]]:
>
> (b) any direct or indirect obligation on the licensee to assign, in
> whole or part, or to a third party designated by the licensor, rights to
> improvements to or new applications of the licensed technology.
>
> Could this affect the GPL ??

Possibly. To my suspicious mind, it almost seems worded deliberately
to destroy copyleft licences. Did Microsoft have any input to this?


-- 
Phil Hunt, address@hidden