| Re: [jakarta.ee-spec.committee] Code-First IP flow? |
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On 2018-05-31 4:52 AM, Steve Millidge
(Payara) wrote:
Can someone clarify the subtle IP point we are arguing here. I thought the ASL or EPL provided a copyright and patent license? Are people discussing incorporating the API JAR in a compatible implementation or recreating the API jar from scratch? Here is the fundamental difference between open source (ALv2 and
EPL) and open standards as they apply to patent licensing. Contributions to open source come with a royalty-free patent license for all of the contributor's patents that read on their contributions or the combination of their contributions and the program as of the day the contribution is made. The patent license applies solely to the implementation the contributions are made to, or derivative works thereof. This is a quite limited royalty-free patent license. Contributions to open standards (at least the way we're going to
do it) come with a royalty-free patent license for all of the
contributor's patents that would necessarily be infringed by any
implementation of the entire standard. So the patent license is
not related to their contributions; it is related to the scope of
the specification. This is a much broader royalty-free patent
license. It also explains the lawyerly interest in the scope
statement for a specification. Does that help? |