Re: [gentoo-dev] Guidance on distributed patented software

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 12:46 PM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Could we add some text to the license concepts covering patents? It
> seems to have been omitted?
> Is my understanding of how we manage patented software correct?

I think you have the gist of it.  Is there actually anything in the
repo these days which is patent-encumbered?  I realize this is a
little tangential, but I think this is probably why we don't have a
well-thought policy: it just doesn't come up much.

The situation comes up less often since everything is copyrighted by
default, but software patents in FOSS are relatively rare.  (Partially
because they're such a minefield that it discourages even creating
FOSS in the first place.  Partially because they're such a minefield
that people tend to favor non-encumbered algorithms for things that
are commonplace now.)

Things that used to be patent-encumbered that were prevalent in FOSS
in the past include:
1. The GIF file format.
2. FAT-based filesystems.
3. MPEG-related codecs (codecs might be a space where patents are
still relevant).
4. RSA

I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of offhand.  All of these
helped drive adoption of more open standards, which is why we don't
run into this stuff as often.

Another topic like this are encryption keys like for DVDCSS and so on.
Those fall outside both copyright and patent law, but are legally
troublesome.  Then there are export controls like ITAR/etc - less of
an issue today but might still apply to some things.

-- 
Rich