CLA concerns

[James Mihm]

Timothy, Thanks for your input. I'll add this topic to the agenda for the
next TSC meeting.

James.


On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 12:39 AM Timothy Pearson <
tpearson at raptorengineering.com> wrote:

> All,
>
> While we would like to upstream the Talos II / Blackbird BMC patches to
> the OpenBMC project, our legal folks will not approve the CLA.  The main
> concern is the patent section, since our mainboards do contain patented
> technology that is not part of OpenBMC, but that OpenBMC may interface
> with.  We are not trying to upstream any code that would result in patent
> action, but are very concerned that the CLA would end up granting a license
> for the patented technology that exists outside of OpenBMC, merely because
> the OpenBMC codebase is able to interface with that external technology.
>
> The specific clause in question is:
> "...or by combination of Your Contribution(s) with the Work to which such
> Contribution(s) were submitted."
>
> This is ambiguous enough that legal is concerned an external entity
> wishing to clone the patented technology from our mainboards without a
> license would simply be able to merge our contributions with their own de
> novo code duplicating parts of the patented technology, then claim a
> license for the patents was automatically granted by the CLA.  As such, we
> are currently blocked from upstreaming code to OpenBMC, despite the fact
> that our patches are freely available under GPL and MIT licenses, and that
> those patches are not covered by any of our patents (past or future).
>
> Is there a way to clean up the patent section of the CLA to make it
> clearer that only the patches submitted are released from patent
> infringement claims, and that any third party modifications to those
> patches (or to the codebase created in part by those patches) must still be
> cleared by their respective authors / maintainers not to infringe on the
> patent rights of other contributors to the codebase?
>
> Thank you!
>
> --
> Timothy Pearson
> Raptor Engineering, LLC
> https://www.raptorengineering.com
> +1 (415) 727-8645
>
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