Re: APSL Hidden Nasty's
On 18 Mar 1999, John Hasler wrote:
> Jules Bean writes:
>
> > You don't think licenses are enforceable on minors. I find that hard to
> > believe.
>
> A free software license grants rights beyond those permitted to the owner
> of a copy by copyright law. If a free license is a contract and a minor
> can therefor not agree to it, he receives none of the rights granted by the
> license. This puts him in exactly the same legal situation wrt his copy of
> emacs as to his copy of _Programming Perl_.
>
> I don't think that a 16 year old who was caught selling bootleg copies of
> _Programming Perl_ could use the "I'm a minor so I don't have to honor my
> contracts" defense, because no contract is involved. He didn't enter into
> an agreement to give up his right to copy _Programming Perl_ in return for
> some consideration: he lost it through operation of law.
But you think that minors cannot work on GPL programs? (Or any other free
software, for that matter)...
Come to that, minors presumably can't install (commercial or
otherwise) software themselves..
Or make use of 'public domain' data.
Hmm..
Jules
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| Jelibean aka | jules@jellybean.co.uk | 6 Evelyn Rd |
| Jules aka | jules@debian.org | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
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| War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. |
| When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. |
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