On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 04:32:19PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > On Mon, 08 Sep 2003, Steve Langasek wrote: > > On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 03:37:47PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > >>I'm not totally convinced one way or another is right, but case law > >>and legislation (UCITA, etc.) seems to be going towards leases. > > *NOT* in the case of licenses that are considered free. > Could you explain to me why free licenses are going to be treated > differently under the law than licenses that are not free? There is nothing in the law that I've seen which prevents someone from authoring and distributing a piece of software on principles other than those governing leases; and no license that passes the DFSG could ever be predicated on a lease, given that modification and redistribution are essential freedoms. Thus, they'd be treated differently under the law by virtue of the fact that they *are* different. Also, the UCITA has been happily rejected by a fair number of the states where it was originally proposed and is being disputed elsewhere, so it's not much of a precedent. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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