On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 02:48:01PM +0700, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> If you violate a patent, knowingly or otherwise, you are subject to
> penalties (perhaps not treble but still penalties) and will have to remove
> the offending code unless a deal is reached with the patent holder.
Unless you do a patent search every time you design something, you can't
avoid the risk of accidentally infringing.
> It is critical that Postgres require that all contributors do not enforce
> patents against Postgres - full stop. That's the IP agreement that should
> be in place.
My take is that the PG license should make royalty-free, non-exclusive,
transferrable, worldwide patent grants that are either irrevocable or
revocable only againts those who sue the owner. This together with a
contributor agreement would stop contributions by patent trolls, but it
still wouldn't prevent accidental re-inventions.
I don't understand why it's not obvious that one can unknowingly and
accidentally re-invent someone else's idea.