Comment Software Termination Licenses (Score 1) 141
The point of an indemnification is that it prevents someone else from sueing you over whatever is being indemnified. In this particular case, what IBM is promising is to prevent that from occuring but since this is free software, they will not go beyond that.
If a person(s) sue IBM sucessfully over an intellectual property issue then the normal remedy in the case of a sucessful suit is the revocation of all existing software licenses unless the infringer agrees to make sutiable payments. There is no necessitity that the winner of such a suit agrees to license the property so that exisiting licenses can be maintained. Moreover, if such a suit were sucessful, without an indemnity from IBM every user of the property would be liable for damages and be prohibited from using the software. What IBM's license does it to prevent such secondary suits from occuring, e.g. you cannot be sued for a infringement under IBM's license.
This is actually better than most open source software. One more thing, in a contract the word "reasonable" has special meaning - in this case it means that unless the plaintiff has enough evidence to get a injunction issued IBM will not terminate the license.
If a person(s) sue IBM sucessfully over an intellectual property issue then the normal remedy in the case of a sucessful suit is the revocation of all existing software licenses unless the infringer agrees to make sutiable payments. There is no necessitity that the winner of such a suit agrees to license the property so that exisiting licenses can be maintained. Moreover, if such a suit were sucessful, without an indemnity from IBM every user of the property would be liable for damages and be prohibited from using the software. What IBM's license does it to prevent such secondary suits from occuring, e.g. you cannot be sued for a infringement under IBM's license.
This is actually better than most open source software. One more thing, in a contract the word "reasonable" has special meaning - in this case it means that unless the plaintiff has enough evidence to get a injunction issued IBM will not terminate the license.
