[Zlib-devel] zlib and LZMA

[William A. Rowe, Jr.]

Greg Roelofs wrote:
> "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wrowe at rowe-clan.net> wrote:
> 
>> [...] But of course, anything he does to ensure
>> that nobody plays patent games around his sphere of work will undermine
>> compatibility with the GPL which permits no other restrictions.
> 
> That's true of GPLv1 and GPLv2.  GPLv3 (draft) includes moderately strong
> patent-related language.
> 
> 	http://lwn.net/Articles/193183/
> 	http://lwn.net/Articles/193118/

Of course :)  That said, it isn't finished yet, I wouldn't be keen on adopting
a draft license - it's draft because it has yet to be accepted by all the camps
and finish the lengthy vetting and public comment period.

Adopting a draft GPL would quite possibly be incompatible with the 'real v3' :)
In fact GPL 3 code is likely to be incompatible with earlier GPL's which
permitted no other restrictions, so the issue will be getting -all- the major
sprockets and gears of open source to adopt at once (those that state they are
licensed under GPL vX, as opposed to vX 'or any later version'.)

But yes - very good that the GPL is addressing this, I don't think any common
license will escape this decade without coming to some position on patents.