Lit Review 3: SFLC Legal Primer Chapter 4

We are revisiting the Foss Legal Primer, this time with Chapter 4. Lets dive in. 

Who:

The Primer is written by a laundry list of who's who of FOSS: Richard Fontana, Bradley M. Kuhn, Eben Moglen, Matthew Norwood, Daniel B. Ravicher, Karen Sandler, James Vasile, and Aaron Williamson.

What:

The chapters of The Primer we are covering today detail much of the Primer is and some basic details on a couple of the many licenses that you can choose to file your project under.

Where:

You can find a copy of The Primer here.

When:


The Primer hasn't been updated in a while, but the last revision was put out in 2008.

The Gist:

This chapter primarily deals with patenting a FOSS project and what it can mean for your licenses.  

The Good:


Clear information
Has decent advice for not breaking patent and copyright claims
Shows philosophy behind patents and FOSS.



The Bad:


"It depends" is the standard response for untested licenses
Very GPL-oriented
Patent System doesn't really work for the people at all times



Any Questions?


What happens when you patent existing code bases and then update them?
Are there licenses with Patent clauses?
Willful Infringement?



Final Thoughts and Rating:


The Legal Primer is a good read overall, but this chapter takes it into a very weird area. This is mostly because the US Patent system is a very strange beast that doesn't really treat well with the nature of code. That said, the Primer does its best to explain to the layman how they should deal with it, even if only in a primary fashion. 9/10.