Re: Some licensing questions regarding celestia
* Rick Moen (rick@linuxmafia.com) [030907 07:35]:
> If you are asserting that licences must apply through contract
> mechanisms (which is what I understand to be your -- tediously familiar
> from past iterations of this discussion -- argument), then privity of
> contract between the licensor and third-hand recipients becomes a
> problem. You might be able to build a case that those downloading the
> tarball directly from the author's site undergo the required offer &
> acceptance, but further uploads and downloads entail no such
> relationship between recipient and licensor.
Also further downloads do. Let's assume GPLv2 for a moment, and a set
of three persons: A, the author, B, who downloaded it from A, and C,
who downloaded it from B.
B downloading from A is not a problem. The problem is: How can C get a
valid contract from A, but he is downloading only from B? Well, A has
said "GPLv2", and within the first condition he has given implicit
permission to make a GPLv2-contract on his behalf to anyone who has a
piece of GPLv2-source of him. GPL #6 says this explicitly:
| 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
| Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
| original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
| these terms and conditions. [...]
So, C is making a contract with A through B (even if A is not going to
notice it). Furthermore, A can even not disallow B to make such
contracts; a try to do this would be a serious breach of his contract
with B.
The same is valid for other licenses that allow re-distribution, even
if they do not say it as plainly as GPL.
Cheers,
Andi
--
http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/
PGP 1024/89FB5CE5 DC F1 85 6D A6 45 9C 0F 3B BE F1 D0 C5 D1 D9 0C
Reply to: