Yesterday, I blogged about how TomTom could license Microsoft's FAT file system patents without violating the GPL. It deserves some clarification. My full story (linked to from this blog) included SFLC's Eben Moglen's statement that GPL v2 is violated by license agreements that require counting or disclosing who has received the software, which is an additional restriction incompatible with GPL. This blog did not have it, though I have since added that information.

Eben also said that "no one knows, except the putative licensor, what its terms are, and without knowing what the terms are, no opinion is possible." That was in the full story as well. I should have included that pertinent information in the blog also and regret any confusion that omission may have caused. However, we did learn a little more from Microsoft in the process.

When people link to the blog, they did not see that important information. The purpose of my blog post was to say that it was possible for an agreement with maximum royalties to be GPL compatible. That was interesting to me and something that I thought was worth writing about. Microsoft is not always the party acting in bad faith, and we cannot reflexively discount the possibility that others are. It was not a legal opinion because I am not a lawyer.

The final word from Eben is: "A license which states a running royalty with a maximum might not trigger the license provision because a licensee could disclose his intention to pay the maximum and not keep track of the software. But such a license might well trigger section 7 for other reasons, which one wouldn't know until one reviewed all its terms."