On Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 06:00:02PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 11:28:53PM +0100, Erich Schubert wrote: > > The biggest Problem is the sentence "The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed, > > not sold." i think. > > This is a legal fiction -- though it happens to be one that even Free > Software licensors attempt to use to their advantage -- so I don't think > it's particularly problematic. > Hardly any Free Software licenses attempt to put restrictions on how folks may _use_ lawfully aquired copies of the software. In that respect, when you buy a physical copy of some Free Software package, it was sold to you and not licensed. The GNU GPL, for example, is a license which need be accepted only if you want to perform copying that would otherwise be infringing. In the United States, at least, any copies made in the process of running a program are defined as non-infringing by statute. So you don't need to accept the GNU GPL in order to use a copy of the program which you've bought. -- Brian Ristuccia brian@ristuccia.com bristucc@cs.uml.edu
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