Re: [boost] Re: Boost License future considerations

From: Aaron W. LaFramboise (aaronrabiddog51_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-04 17:18:33

Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> AFAIK, FSF's assignees are not required to obey anything apart from 
> agreeing "not to assert patents which are necessarily infringed, i.e., 
> it is not reasonably possible to avoid infringement, by the use or 
> distribution of the Transferred Work against those who use or
> distribute the Transferred Work when the Transferred Work is used or
> distributed under the GPL or LGPL." Each FSF's assignee "reserves and 
> retains for the benefit of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliated 
> companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, fully paid up right 
> and license to use, execute, copy, make derivative works of, display, 
> perform, distribute, sell, license and otherwise transfer each 
> Transferred Work and derivative works thereof and to authorize others 
> to do any of the forgoing under any terms and conditions." 
> 
> Is this the part of the agreement you're talking about?
> 
> It's totally irrelevant with respect to what I said earlier. 

No.  I found only one hit for this wording, here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg00395.html
I am actually unsure of where this wording comes from, as it is
significantly different from all of the standard FSF assignments.

I found a copy of (old; the FSF now mails the forms to developers
directly) assignment forms here:
http://pluto.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/xemacs/old-beta/FSF
assign.future was the standard form for most developers.  The recent,
physical copy of an assignment form that I have examined is very similar
to this one.

In any case, I agree that it is useful for a developer, for Boost or
otherwise, to have some assurance that his code will not be later
relicensed under terms whose basic principles he did not agree with.  If
someone ever comes up with a relicensing mechanism for Boost, I think
this should be respected.

Aaron W. LaFramboise