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Re: EULAs and the DFSG



On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 04:56:10AM +0100, Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:
> Jakob Bohm <jbj@image.dk> writes:
> > Click agree to accept this license and the lack of warranty.
> > Click decline to not use, copy or distribute this software.
> 
> The main problem is that that's simply not true - you _can_ use the
> software without accepting the license[1].

Ah. I see your confusion now. You really can't legally use the
software without accepting the license, but the GPL imposes no
conditions upon your acceptance of paragraph 0 which grants you usage
rights. You could call this paragraph a "EULA", if you really wanted
to, but there's little point in doing so.

> This is very different from EULAs because with them the end user gets
> *less* rights that normally given by copyright

The rights normally given by copyright are virtually nil; you have the
right to quote it for critical purposes and so on, but not the right
to use it. A "EULA" generally grants you the right to use it.

> entering contract law or the like. (And as been pointed out,
> click-wraps seems to be a very fuzzy area legally, currently. Are they
> void? Valid? Are certain clauses void?)

You'd have to take it to court to find out.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'                          | Imperial College,
   `-             -><-          | London, UK

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