Zenaan Harkness wrote: > On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 08:05, Branden Robinson wrote: > >>On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 02:49:19PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: >> >>>On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 11:57:38PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: >>> >>>>This comment has just clarified something that's been rattling around >>>>half-formed in my head for a little while now, regarding Free licences. I >>>>don't know if it's been raised before, but I think it bears discussion: >>>> >>>>"A licence cannot be Free if it disallows actions which, in the absence of >>>>acceptance of the licence, would be allowed by Copyright law, or imposes >>>>restrictions not present by Copyright law". >>>> >>>>To put it another way (and closer to Brian's wording), if the licence isn't >>>>simply a grant of permission but requires things of me which I would >>>>otherwise be allowed to do, it can't be free. >>> >>>As far as I (and d-legal, I believe) understand it, to disallow these >>>things, you need to form a contract (an EULA). Most restrictions which >>>require this are non-free. >>> >>>I wouldn't quite go so far as to generalize it to "all"; it's probably better >>>to look at the restrictions on their own merits, which will usually also show >>>them to be non-free (and in a more direct way than "this probably isn't >>>enforcable under copyright law alone"). Attempting to go being copyright law >>>is a good hint that something may be wrong, though. >> >>The above did not get much discussion; I'd just like to AOL it, and > > The TLA AOL does not come up in dict; can you please explain that to me/ > us. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/A/AOL-.html >>suggest that any license which attempts to prohibit that which would >>otherwise be legal is non-free by definition. > > Sounds like a useful rule of thumb Agreed. - Josh Triplett
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