| I think the key point in that blog post is this: "Core WordPress updates go out to over a quarter of all websites, having them all inherit the patents clause isn’t something I’m comfortable with." It's one thing to look at the license and guess that it's vanishingly unlikely you'll ever be in an intellectual property fight with FB (and it sounds like the counsel Automattic consulted with came to that conclusion for Automattic). It's another thing to make that decision for everybody downstream using software that you distribute. Particularly when that's a reaaaally large number of people. I'm on much less solid ground in speculating about more, but it's often interesting to watch the contents of speech when people are working to assure you of something: "One nice thing about this apartment is that it's very secure." (That's interesting. Why is it important that this apartment is very secure? Is the neighborhood not so much secure?) "This guy we're interviewing here is not being interviewed for your position." (That's interesting. Why do I need to know that, manager?) In the case of this post, between the lines I potentially see something like: "Hey FB, we don't feel threatened by the license, and you know, he who writes to code makes the rules, like Linus says. You're obviously doing what's right for you, from your point of view, and we're sure you know what's best for you, and if you're doing right by yourself, do you need to even ask if you're doing the right thing? You do you, bro. And we're sure you won't be mad that we wanna let everybody else be themselves, too." Not sure it's there, I could be reading more into it than I need to. |