Patent nonsense: zstd

Patent nonsense: zstd

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Guix,

I've had a package for the ‘zstd’ compressor lying about for quite some
time — since before its weird appropriation by Facebook Inc. as a PR
tool. Apart from that, it's nice. It's fast. Why not upstream it.

While updating and cleaning it up for submission, I noticed a ‘PATENTS’
file[0] that sounds vaguely threatening, or at least tries to do. IANAL
enough to tell.

Any opinions on its meaningfulness? Does it affect the (BSD-3) licence
at all? Does zstd still belong in Guix?

There's some discussion at [1] (GitHub link) for those interested.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/facebook/zstd/dev/PATENTS
[1]: https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/335


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Re: Patent nonsense: zstd

[Leo Famulari]

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On Sat, Nov 05, 2016 at 06:13:58PM +0100, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
> I've had a package for the ‘zstd’ compressor lying about for quite some
> time — since before its weird appropriation by Facebook Inc. as a PR
> tool. Apart from that, it's nice. It's fast. Why not upstream it.
> 
> While updating and cleaning it up for submission, I noticed a ‘PATENTS’
> file[0] that sounds vaguely threatening, or at least tries to do. IANAL
> enough to tell.
> 
> Any opinions on its meaningfulness? Does it affect the (BSD-3) licence
> at all? Does zstd still belong in Guix?

My 2¢ are quoted from the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines
[0], which Guix does follow:

------
Patents

It is effectively impossible for free software developers and
distributors to know whether or not a given piece of software infringes
any patents: there are too many of them, they vary from country to
country, they're often worded so as to make it hard to tell what they do
or don't cover, and it isn't easy to tell which ones are valid.
Therefore, we don't generally ask free system distributions to exclude
software because of possible threats from patents. On the other hand, we
also don't object if a distributor chooses to omit some software in
order to avoid patent risk.
------

But like I said, my opinion on this subject is only worth 2¢ ;)

Also see the statement by the maintainer / author Yann Collet:
https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/335#issuecomment-245011724

[0]
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.en.html

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Re: Patent nonsense: zstd

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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[...and now CC'ing the list because mail is hard.]

Leo,

On 05/11/16 19:56, Leo Famulari wrote:
> My 2¢ are quoted from the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines
> [0], which Guix does follow:
>
> [...] they're often worded so as to make it hard to tell what they
> do or don't cover, [...]

I got the same vibes from the answers in that GitHub thread[0]. I'm
easily suspicious.

> [...] On the other hand, we also don't object if a distributor
> chooses to omit some software in order to avoid patent risk.

This is (partly) what prompted me to write to guix-devel in the first
place: I wasn't sure if the Guix maintainers have their own opinions on
the matter.

> But like I said, my opinion on this subject is only worth 2¢ ;)

Still more sense than I started with. Thanks!

Kind regards,

T G-R

> [0]: Also see the statement by the maintainer / author Yann Collet:
> https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/335#issuecomment-245011724




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Re: Patent nonsense: zstd

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> skribis:

> [...and now CC'ing the list because mail is hard.]
>
> Leo,
>
> On 05/11/16 19:56, Leo Famulari wrote:
>> My 2¢ are quoted from the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines
>> [0], which Guix does follow:
>>
>> [...] they're often worded so as to make it hard to tell what they
>> do or don't cover, [...]
>
> I got the same vibes from the answers in that GitHub thread[0]. I'm
> easily suspicious.
>
>> [...] On the other hand, we also don't object if a distributor
>> chooses to omit some software in order to avoid patent risk.
>
> This is (partly) what prompted me to write to guix-devel in the first
> place: I wasn't sure if the Guix maintainers have their own opinions on
> the matter.

I’d follow the FSDG’s wisdom here and include it in the distro (also I
live in the EU where such patents are supposedly not applicable).

That said, I would not recommend its use.

Ludo’.