Study: Developers do not want GPL 3 to police patents
eWeek | at | by Mike
A new Microsoft-funded study has found that open-source developers do not believe that licenses such as the upcoming GNU General Public License 3.0 should enforce software patents or prevent deals like the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement.
The study by Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack, in collaboration with Keystone Strategy, is titled "A Developers Bill of Rights: What Open Source Developers Want in a Software License."
"While many of the developers surveyed cited displeasure with the patent element of the Novell-Microsoft deal, the use of digital rights management to restrict the use of modified open-source software, or the enforcement of software patents, they did not believe it was the place of the GPLv3 or other licenses to prevent such deals or resolve such issues," MacCormack told eWEEK in an interview.