On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:39:19PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > That doesn't change anything. Quote from the GPL: > 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program > except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt > otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is > void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. > [...] > 5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not > signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or > distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are > prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by > modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the > Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and > all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying > the Program or works based on it. > So, even if you do not accept the license but you do copy, modify, > and/or distribute the Program, you're still bound by the License. s/you're still bound by the License/you can be countersued for\ copyright infringement *or* license violation if you try to sue under\ warranty law/ > > > If someone tries to sue you for distributing FSF software, you can > > > point at the same parts of the GPL and also at the warning on your web > > > site, if you have one. > > The whole point of my hypothetical example is that I don't accept the > > license and use the software nevertheless. > Not accepting the GPL is not a way to avoid it. You would be using a > copy of the program without the right to do so; it would be the Free > Software-equivalent of software piracy. In fact, use rights are not within the scope of copyright in most jurisdictions; so even if you received no license text with a copy of a given work, you would still have the right to use the work -- and in many jurisdictions, you would also have the right to sue the author under warranty law if something went horribly wrong while using the software. So the GPL itself does not directly protect against lawsuits from disgruntled users, which is actually the strongest argument in favor of GPL 2(c). In any case, the GPL is not well suited for use as a click-through, because most of the information contained in the GPL does not pertain to end users at all. What you would really want is something much more limited, such as a disclaimer as described in 2(c) together with an 'accept' button. FWIW, to date I'm not aware of any end user suing the author of a GPL work under warranty law. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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