Should an Open Source Licence Ever Be Patent-Agnostic?

“The proposed licence is closely modelled on the Mozilla Public
Licence (MPL). In his submission to the OSI, the well-known free
software activist Carlo Piana explains the key difference:

“As you will notice, we have removed some of the patent
conditions that existed in the MPL. This is because none of the
contributors would have accepted to encapsulate their patents in a
FOSS license without the ability to ask for a license separately
from the copyright. This is a basic tenet that is enshrined in the
so-called ISO/IEC Directives for the development of International
Standards. Some of you might know about my public stance against
software patents and my approval to some of the licenses which
impose implied licensing to or patent retaliation against all who
distribute FOSS software while relying on patent protection.
However, the sad truth is that if we did not offer a
patent-agnostic license we would have made all efforts to have an
open source reference implementation moot.”

Complete Story