fenics team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 10:23:44AM -0800, Johan Hake wrote:
> On Wednesday February 9 2011 10:14:51 Johan Hake wrote:
> > On Wednesday February 9 2011 10:10:04 Anders Logg wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 09:52:21AM -0800, Johan Hake wrote:
> > > > Hello!
> > > >
> > > > UCSD is not willing to sign the consent statement about GPL 3...
> > > >
> > > > From the answer I got:
> > > >   LGPL incorporates GPL 3, and that is the problem. Earlier versions of
> > > >   the GPL did not deal in patent rights, while Version 3 does. It would
> > > >   commit a license to the entire UC patent estate, whether the
> > > >   inventors were an informed participant or not. I would need to
> > > >   consult further with UC General Counsel for a detailed answer, but
> > > >   the spirit is that the license overreaches in its commitments to
> > > >   patent rights beyond what the university is willing to do.
> > >
> > > That seems strange. So UCSD will want to retain the right to sue users
> > > of DOLFIN if you should happen to add code to DOLFIN that infringes on
> > > some patent held by UCSD?
> >
> > I have no clue what it means. But I will ask.
>
> Here is a more elaborated explaination:
>
>   The language is pretty clear in section 11 of the GPL V3 license - it
>   commits all the rights of the Licensor (the Regents of the University of
>   California) to a license. Our normal licensing practice is to license one
>   technology at a time, and we do not license the other patents along with it.
>   Our guiding principles for licensing are at this link
>
>   <http://invent.ucsd.edu/faculty/policies/guiding-principles.shtml>
>
> Johan

Is it this paragraph?

  "Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free
  patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to
  make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and
  propagate the contents of its contributor version."

Assuming that something in your contract makes UCSD the "contributor"
and not you personally, this means that UCSD grants any patent
licenses needed to run the code that you put into FEniCS.

The other option is to reserve the right to sue the users of FEniCS
for any UCSD patents that your code in FEnICS is infringing upon.

As far as I understand, it doesn't say anything about other patents
that UCSD have that are unrelated to the actual code in FEniCS.

If they refuse to sign the consent form, will they also refuse to let
you continue to contribute code to FEniCS? And sue us all for the code
you have contributed so far?

--
Anders



>
> > > > Are there any others that have got a similare answer?
> > >
> > > No problems so far. Here's what we have so far:
> > >   http://www.fenicsproject.org/pub/copyright/authors/
> > >   http://www.fenicsproject.org/pub/copyright/institutions/
> >
> > I guess the Cambridge statement is not correct?
> >
> > Johan
> >
> >
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