afl 2.1 license

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Havoc,

	I guess I never responded to this:

On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 21:34 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> The revised AFL is finally out - the previous "termination for patent
> action" clause that certain big companies opposed was:
> 
>         10) Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate
>         automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights
>         granted to You by this License as of the date You commence an
>         action, including a cross-claim or counterclaim, for patent
>         infringement (i) against Licensor with respect to a patent
>         applicable to software or (ii) against any entity with respect
>         to a patent applicable to the Original Work (but excluding
>         combinations of the Original Work with other software or
>         hardware).
>         
> and the new clause is:
> 
>         10) Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate
>         automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights
>         granted to You by this License as of the date You commence an
>         action, including a cross-claim or counterclaim, against
>         Licensor or any licensee alleging that the Original Work
>         infringes a patent. This termination provision shall not apply
>         for an action alleging patent infringement by combinations of
>         the Original Work with other software or hardware.
> 
> I don't know if this is now acceptable to the people who disliked AFL
> 2.0.

	I guess it is better - but I guess we would have to do some painful
legal work in-house to review the terms. At least the immediately
obvious, no-brainer "this will never fly whatsoever", poison pill
appears to have gone (to my untrained eye). Of course, what a
combination is I have no idea.

	So - I'm still concerned that we throw away a license that is known &
accepted, for one that is new and unproven for no gain I can easily
understand. I thought we were going to switch to an LGPL/AFL combo ?

	Hmm,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks at novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot