Speaking as someone who's been involved in thousands of discussions over
more than a decade evaluating issues like patent risk in consuming open
source software, I don't see a patent clause in a CLA offering any
realistic assurance to a downstream consumer.

Were I involved in a discussion around patent risk in DPDK, I would point
to its license.

That said (and keeping in mind that IANAL), I do *not* see any patent
protection in the BSD license similar to what one sees in the Apache 2
license, or the Eclipse Public License.  Please note: I am not advocating
here for a license change, just drawing attention to my perspective as
someone who's been deeply involved in such things for a long time.

Ed

On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Vincent Jardin <vincent.jardin@6wind.com>
wrote:

> Matt,
>
> Please explain why you think that contributions under BSD licenses are not
> proper contributions for patents. For instance, Free/Net/OpenBSD do not
> require any CLA so contribution process remains smooth.
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
>