Re: Plans for 2.8 - GNOME Managed Language Services?

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> > > > MY understanding that all ECMA bits are unencumbered insofar as they
> > > > *must* be licensed under RAND terms. Is my understanding incorrect?
> > > 
> > > One problem is that RAND is still GPL-incompatible. That's why you can't
> > > ship MP3 or MPEG4 codecs licensed under the GPL, even if you buy a
> > > patent license.
> > 
> > RAND + Royalty Free in the case of ECMA.
> > 
> > In any case, am wondering why RAND is incompatible with the GPL?  This
> > is news to me, and a google search did not reveal anything, nor could I
> > find anything about this on the gnu.org site.   
> 
>   Check with Perens or anybody who worked on the Patent Policy Working
> Group at W3C, RAND was rejected for future W3C specs due to those kind
> of problems.

I tracked that discussion closely, and that was not a problem with the
GPL, but in general with the fact that it would limit distribution of
*any* open source software if the terms were not RAND + Royalty Free.

The later, I agree with.  Without Royalty free terms, open source
implementations of anything that needs a patent is not optimal, as it
is not possible to redistribute.

But lets be clear about that.  

If it is incompatible with the GPL (which I can not see why), lets get
those facts on the table.

Miguel