Patent Grant To GPL-licensed Software
ZD-Net's Interactive week summarised the issue that patents pose to the free software community:
- Levien recognizes the paradox: On one hand, he made money from forcing everyone who used his patented ideas to give him royalties. On the other, he shared the source code of several programs and recognized how the cooperation helped him and others. The two models were in conflict.
As a resolution to this conflict, in March 2000, Raph made a patent grant of his patent portfolio to the GPL community. This step was considered by some to have set a good example, and it has been suggested that it has set a precedent for IBM's subsequent patent grant, which followed two years later.
Read more about this topic: Raph Levien
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