From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 9352 invoked by alias); 19 Jun 2018 16:28:54 -0000 Mailing-List: contact libc-alpha-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: libc-alpha-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 9338 invoked by uid 89); 19 Jun 2018 16:28:54 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,SPF_HELO_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 spammy=interests, sue, bear, babies X-HELO: mx1.redhat.com From: DJ Delorie To: Oleh Derevenko Cc: adhemerval.zanella@linaro.org, libc-alpha@sourceware.org Subject: Re: [RFC 0/1] Contributing a compound object to the libpthread In-Reply-To: (message from Oleh Derevenko on Tue, 19 Jun 2018 15:42:54 +0300) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2018 16:28:00 -0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-SW-Source: 2018-06/txt/msg00562.txt.bz2 The usual IANAL disclaimer applies :-) Oleh Derevenko writes: > All the patent texts (except for those that contain sectecy matter) > are publicly available from the USPTO or similar corresponding > national/international patent management offices. As Adhemerval noted, it's not the idea we're running into issues with, it's the legal framework under which we are allowed to learn about the idea. Welcome to the US legal system, it's a mess, but it's what we've got to work with. For starters, I'll point out that you, as a patent owner, are legally allowed to sue anyone who re-creates your invention without your permission. I know this isn't your intent, but bear with me a moment, as I'm describing a worst-case scenario. So, you're allowed to sue. Maybe they're using your invention to torture babies. Maybe they're a competitor. Maybe you don't like the color of their logo. It doesn't matter, you're *allowed* to sue. Worse, the US legal system will grant you triple damages if you can show that the re-creation was done *knowing* you have a patent on it. Because of this, it's in our best *legal* interests to not even look at patents because of the added risk. But, you say, you *want* people to use your inventions. That's wonderful, and we appreciate that, but unfortunately you have to say that *legally* before we can act on it, and that means paperwork. Likewise for copyright stuff. We're happy you want to contribute, but if you want to give us code to use, you have to give it to us legally so we can protect ourselves against future legal problems. We also use this legal "muscle" to protect our code (and code you've contributed) from being mis-used by "bad actors". There have been instances in the past where huge chunks of code had to be pulled out of non-GNU packages because of copyright issues. The FSF avoids this by legally owning the code via copyright assignments. So we ask for patent licenses and copyright assignments. Because of our legal system, this has to be a hard requirement, and there's little we can do about it.