Include MPlayer in beta?

Mike A. Harris mharris at redhat.com
Wed Sep 17 17:51:05 UTC 2003


On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Bryan W. Headley wrote:

>> b) MPlayer is saying it is GPL.  If he decides to try to use patents to
>> prevent distribution it is no longer GPL (see mp3 discussions).
>
>Are you saying that patenting something in a product retroactively 
>revokes the GPL license for all prior releases?

You can't patent something that is already public and widely 
used.  You design something, patent it, then distribute it.

Think about it.  You design some piece of software, and in it you 
use this neato algorithm, then you release the software as OSS 
under say the BSD license (not that the license matters but I 
have a reason for choosing BSD in this example[1]).

Now, I take your BSD licensed software, and use your algorithm in 
my own program, and then ship my program.

6 months later you patent it, then sue me.  Um no.  That's not 
how it works.

If this is confusing to you, please consult an IP attourney.

TTYL


[1] I chose the BSD license, because BSD licensed software could
potentially contain patented bits of code as that license does
not forbit patented technology.  The GPL license however does
forbid patented technology from being used under the GPL license
unless the owner of the patent has granted an unlimited royalty
free patent license grant which is compatible with the GPL, which
means the license grant must not impose any restrictions upon the
software or rights granted by the GPL.  An example of patented
technology being used in GPL licensed software in a GPL
compatible manner is the tux2 technology patented by Red Hat.

-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat





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