Originally posted by mrugiero
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Mark Shuttleworth Declares Mir A Performance Win
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Originally posted by chrisb View PostThere is another risk with MIT licence: it doesn't address patents, so if a single company (Samsung, LG whoever) gets a patent that covers the display server, then they - and only they - can produce a closed source version. People keep saying that the Wayland licence enforces equality, but it doesn't even attempt to address the big problem of patents. Even disregarding the patent issue, if a company does make a successful closed source fork, then they can build upon that fork, because it is now owned by them. No other company will be allowed to use that fork in their own product. Equality ceases for forks and patents, whereas the GPL3 ensures that equality extends to forks and patented versions.
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Originally posted by TheBlackCat View Posteverybody is equally able to make closed forks with the MIT license
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Originally posted by chrisb View PostThere is another risk with MIT licence: it doesn't address patents, so if a single company (Samsung, LG whoever) gets a patent that covers the display server, then they - and only they - can produce a closed source version. People keep saying that the Wayland licence enforces equality, but it doesn't even attempt to address the big problem of patents. Even disregarding the patent issue, if a company does make a successful closed source fork, then they can build upon that fork, because it is now owned by them. No other company will be allowed to use that fork in their own product. Equality ceases for forks and patents, whereas the GPL3 ensures that equality extends to forks and patented versions.
GPL3 ensures the equality you name if and only if it's by itself, but it's not in the case of Mir. Canonical is still the only one with rights to relicense thanks to the CLA, and they do not even need patents to do so (which means they don't even need to think of something original). Compare a risk of using something patented against the security that one have that Canonical is the only one able to do closed source derivatives.
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Originally posted by chrisb View PostNo, if some company has a patent that covers the display server, then they will be the only ones that can make a closed fork. MIT does not require patent disclosure or licensing.
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Originally posted by blackout23 View PostHow could someone patent a wayland display server? Wouldn't it be prior art?
EDIT: Also, if a patented tech is used, one could just strip the code using it and do it a different way. You can also decide to reject a patch based on the fact it used patented bits, or even make them sign an agreement where use within the project of your patented work is royalty free for both forking, source distribution and binary distribution. The same way you can add clauses to any license, you can add clauses about contributing patented work. The simplest solution is to just reject patches with patented algorithms.Last edited by mrugiero; 13 July 2013, 12:48 PM.
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Originally posted by LinuxGamer View PostMir is A Performance Win look how well it work's on AMD or Nvidia OpenSource Driver's Thank you Mark Shuttleworth
Also it breaks on intel install's too Super unstable but it will be ready in October?
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Originally posted by mrugiero View PostGPL3 doesn't address patents the contributors do not own. Why? Because it's simply not above patents law. It's just a contract between the programmers and everyone else, so it only address patents that the contributors own, which they can actually promise not to sue you for using in that piece of software or derivatives. If Samsung owns a patent for something used in Mir, they keep the rights on it, because the code was contributed by Canonical, not by Samsung.
GPL3 ensures the equality you name if and only if it's by itself, but it's not in the case of Mir. Canonical is still the only one with rights to relicense thanks to the CLA, and they do not even need patents to do so (which means they don't even need to think of something original). Compare a risk of using something patented against the security that one have that Canonical is the only one able to do closed source derivatives.
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Originally posted by chrisb View PostGPL covers distribution, not contributions. If Samsung distributed Mir to users, then they also implicitly grant a patent licence, so anyone can distribute mir. With Wayland, Samsung could distribute it, assert that the project requires one of their patents, and then noone else could distribute it.
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