Re: OpenPatent & OpenIPCore

[Mark Shewmaker <mark@primefactor.com>]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2036 at 03:47:36PM +0000, jamil khatib wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am very intrested in the idea of OpenPatent License for OpenIPCore
> project.
> In the openipcore project we are trying to define a protection scheme
> for openhardware designs. we have several suggestions about this kind of
> protection "visit te license page at our site http://www.openip.org/oc".
> I'd like to know how can we use the openPatent as one of hte protction
> schemes to hardware.

Well, it's still in development, so the most important thing is to make
sure the license can be adapted to meet your needs while it's still in
alpha, assuming that our goals end up to be as compatible as they seem.

Above all, I think it's very important to prevent gratuitous
proliferation of GPL'ish patent-cross-licensing agreements.  It would
wasteful and possibly harmful to all of us.

We're already inconvenienced by the proliferation of Open Source
licenses.  There can be and are good reason to have different Open
Source licenses, some are business reasons and some are ethical reasons.
However, we're still left with a maze of incompatibilities.

I don't want a similar maze of incompatibilities to show up in
patent-land.  It would be much worse with patents, because while for
copyrights authors could theoretically all use different licenses and
work out the maze of incompatibilities between them all, for patents all
the software authors would also have to persuade the same patent-holders
to license their patent(s), over and over, for every single license,
probably with less and less success as time went on, which is the main
reason why I think having multiple similar patent licenses could be much
more destructive than having a proliferation of Open Source licenses.

(Although the Open Source copyright licenses do tend to have small
references to patent rights that have worked pretty well so far, they
haven't required any of this explicit licensing of individual patent
numbers, so the problem above hasn't shown up.  I would expect it to be
a problem if multiple similar patent licenses proliferate, though.)

So I would really hope we could consolidate the patent issues into one
license that could be referenced as needed.  Referring to this one
patent license would also make it possible for you to simplify your
license by uncoupling it from the patent issues, and nobody has to
duplicate work, whether it's writing and promoting the license, or
persuading patent holders to agree to the twelfth license of the same
type in a row.

With that notion, (and some other strategic notions) in mind, I tried to
make the OPL so it could be a one-size-fits-all license.  People can
submit patents under the license such that they can be used in different
circumstances.  I tried to set up the Options and Pools to maximize the
number of conceivable and compatible groups that could benefit.

One compatibility problem I see from the Open Hardware and OpenIPCore
points of view is that the OPL is currently a GPL-ish license, not an
LGPL-ish one.  I have to admit that I had a hard time really wrapping my
mind around the concepts currently in the license.  I thought I had
everything clear in my head, but when it got to writing things down, I
had to change the Options and Pools around a good bit before everything
fit.  I've held off adding LGPL'ish parts to the license so that the
GPL-ish parts can be nailed down.  Then, if it makes sense and is still
necessary, the LGPL-ish parts can be added in.  I'm coming more and more
to think that a GPL-ish-only license will do, because over time more of
the things I thought would require LGPL-ish additions seem more and more
to be doable with (a better edited and legally debugged version of) the
current license.  So, even though both you and the openppc group will
probably need to have lgpl-ish options of the license, I wonder if we
could nail down the gpl-ish parts first, and then see what's left that
needs to be specified.

One snag:  The license is geared toward making a distinction between
hardware and software.  I haven't fully wrapped my mind around what that
distinction should mean in reference to, say, a vhdl design containing
only OPL-licensed IP together with things the OPL doesn't cover, but
housed in something that is covered by a non-OPL patent.

What I think should happen, (and again I haven't thought all this
through really), is that if the vhdl design is considered Open Source,
that it should be considered software just as much as a handheld
device's EPROM code stored in a patented device would be considered
software, and thus the rules of Pool F (the Free Software/Open Source
Pool) of the OPL would apply.

The problem then is on what happens if a proprietary vhdl library is
included?  That would seem to mean the work-as-a-whole isn't Open Source
anymore, so this would have to be considered a proprietary software
work.  But should closed source vhdl designs still be considered
software?

In a way it almost seems like a trade secret.  Copyright is supposed to
allow you to look at the thing in question even though there are limits
on redistribution.  Is there an equivalent of a disassembler for
closed-source vhdl, where given a chip you can fair-use critique what's
there just as much as you could do with a movie or with disassembled
proprietary code?

Even so, I'm still strongly leaning towards the look-at-it-like-software
side both for Open Source and non Open Source cases, such that I would
want to eventually bring it up with patent attorney(s) that would go
over the license.  If you have any comments or pointers to information
on why it should be looked at that way from the point of view of the
OPL, please post them.  (Maybe the PLIP requirement should say that you
have to have access to the "compiled" (?) vhdl results.)

Anyway, are there things the OpenIP groups would need that are not
currently addressed, or that could be better addressed?  I'm interested
in any general or specific deficiencies you might see in the license.

I'd be delighted if you could find the OPL useful.  Please let
me know what I can do to help.

 -Mark Shewmaker
  mark@primefactor.com