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Re: Conditions vs. (possibly inaccurate) notices (was Re: Please pass judgement on X-Oz licence: free or nay?



On Mon, 2004-08-09 at 22:59, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Matthew Garrett wrote:
>  >The wording of the clause is identical. Are you claiming that the
>  >differing location of it in the license alters the situations that it
>  >applies to?
> 
> Absolutely.
> 
> In the X11 license:
> 
> "Permission is hereby granted.... provided that... and that... appear in 
> supporting documentation.
> [Warranty Disclaimer]
> [Problem Clause]
> [Other Stuff]"
> 
> Note that only the conditions in the "Permission is granted" sentence 
> are actually conditions on the permission grant.  The "Problem Clause" 
> has a status equivalent to the warranty disclaimer; it's another statement.

In the X license, what we all agree is a condition is also an assertoric
statement:
"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

This is worded the same way as:
"Except as contained in this notice, the name of [Org] shall not be used
in advertising..."

The X license also says permission is granted "subject to the following
conditions" (note the plural); under your interpretation of the license,
that's grammatically incorrect because there's only one condition.

I think the wording of the license suggests that the bit after the
warranty disclaimer is itself a condition (and for that matter, the
warranty disclaimer itself is also). Legally extraneous conditions
perhaps, but conditions nonetheless.
-- 
Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>

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