On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 5:09 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I wasn't aware of "if we can probably get
away with it" in the WMF
guidelines regarding free software.
If software is non-free just because someone files patent suits
against those who use it, then Linux is non-free also. Microsoft has
claimed for years to have patents that make it illegal to redistribute
Linux without its permission, and it has sued one company (TomTom) on
those grounds. Likewise, Apple recently sued HTC on a theory that
boils down to the claim that probably all web browsers infringe its
patents, IIRC. How is this different from Oracle suing Google?
Almost all software might theoretically be covered by someone's
patents, but practically speaking, that doesn't make it non-free.
It's still free as long as modified versions can be widely
disseminated in practice, and that's still the case for Java up until
Oracle starts collecting royalties as a matter of course.