On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 1:55 PM Richard Fontana <fontana(a)sharpeleven.org>
wrote:
On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 10:54 PM Bradley M. Kuhn
<bkuhn(a)ebb.org> wrote:
> In short, your response gives a lot of useful and interesting FOSS
history,
> but I feel like on balance your response makes the case that this
retaliation
> clause isn't worth keeping. What's your case *for* keeping it, if any?
I don't really have a strong case. The strongest case seems to be the
cargo cult.
Let me make a slightly stronger argument for the MPL 2.0 approach, which
(in copyleft-next language) triggers when there is litigation against
the *Covered
Work* rather than *My Work*. This was a deliberate choice to protect an
entire community of collaborators, not just the bigger players who are most
likely to be involved in gameable/intense patent litigation.
Whether that makes a large practical difference is unclear, but two data
points:
(1) I'm aware of one substantial patent owner and litigator who has
declared they will not accept MPL 2 because they want to reserve the right
to litigate broadly. They asked Mozilla to narrow the language pre-release;
Mozilla declined.
(2) I'm aware of a (fairly substantial) litigation which might not have
been brought had the MPL 2-style broader defensive clause been in place,
because the much broader termination (including copyrights, and from all
contributors) would have changed the cost-benefit analysis.
I'm not sure that's a hugely persuasive argument overall, so perhaps
cutting it from copyleft-next is reasonable, but IMNSHO MPL-2-style is at
least much more defensible than (say) the Apache License language.
Luis