Re: contracts vs. licenses, OSI, and Debian (was: The QPL licence)
Branden Robinson said on Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 05:45:39PM -0500,:
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 07:29:57PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> > To veer off the subject a little, we don't like licenses which
> > engage in too much contract-like behavior, because they're
> > usually non-free. In particular, any license which requires that
> > you agree to it in order to *use* it -- since use is not normally
> > restricted by copyright law -- is trying to be a contract, and is
> > also non-free.
>
> Indeed. Larry Rosen, who is an attorney and is the legal advisor
> to the Board of the Open Source Initiative[1], is a major advocate
> of converting copyright licenses into contracts[2], as are major
> media[3] and proprietary software[4][5] companies.
>
> I personally think this explains a great many of the divergences
> between Debian's assessment of licenses and OSI's.
In law, you cannot impose obligations on anybody without their
consent. `Acceptance' is required/necessary only if the license
imposes an obligation on user. Asking the *user* to contribute back
his `in-house' modifications, a hallmark of at least a few of OSI
licenses, imposes an obligation on him. Naturally, proponents of such
licenses require that the license is a contract.
The GNU/GPL, OTOH, does not impose an obligation on *use*. Obviously,
the FSF does not require it to be `accepted'. The policy of certain
package installation software, (typically on non-free platforms)
insisting on the display of licenses (even in case of the GPL) and
asking the user to accept them, is therefore, IMHO inappropriate.
--
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,
'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,
Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,
Kerala, India.
http://paivakil.port5.com
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