Re: Some licensing questions regarding celestia

[Dylan Thurston <dpt@math.harvard.edu>]

On 2003-09-09, Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Sep 2003, Steve Langasek wrote:
>> 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.
>
> True. I was merely using it to point out the direction that statute
> seems to be headed. There are clauses of UCITA that I really dislike,
> and I'm glad it hasn't been made law everywhere. But it does embody a
> substantial amount of current legal thought.

The UCITA is officially dead.  On August 1, the NCCUSL disbanded the
UCITA standing committee was discharged and they decided to "not
expend any additional Conference energy or resources in having UCITA
adopted".  See

http://www.nccusl.org/nccusl/DesktopModules/NewsDisplay.aspx?ItemID=56
http://www-affect@ucita.com/happening.html

So the question of whether software licenses that claim to be leases
are actually valid remains a question for the court.  OTOH, a license
like the GPL does not claim to be a lease in any way; I don't see how
it could be interpreted that way.

Peace,
	Dylan Thurston