Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>]

Javier Candeira schrieb:
> GPL v2 does protect the work from software patents.

Ah, I seem to have overlooked that one.

I have two nits to pick with your statement:

1) Software cannot be protected from patents. Protection from patents is 
something that can be granted to persons or companies, not to software. 
(This is slightly hair-splitting, but saying "the software is protected" 
doesn't make sure whether it's the licensor or the licensee who's 
protected.)

2) The protection that this license offers is rather marginal. No 
language in a license can protect the licensees from third-party patents.
Worse, this offers an opportunity for a nasty trick: if the license is 
advertised as "protects from patents", a company can create a subsidiary 
that owns and distributes GPL software that uses patents held by the 
parent company. The parent company stays silent about the patents, waits 
until the software is used by many people, then comes forth, announces 
the patent and collects.
With the right construction, the relationship between company and 
subsidiary need not even be public.
The only thing that helps against this kind of plot is the counterplot 
to any software patents: do the patent research, and good luck to you...

Nit (2) essentially says that the website should be very, very careful 
about claiming any kind of protection. Even if the website authors 
cannot be held responsible if somebody relies on the information given, 
a single case where somebody is damaged can destroy CC's reputation in 
no time at all.

Regards,
Jo