Re: GPL v3 Draft
On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 04:47:32PM +0100, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> On 2/14/06, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 04:01:05PM +0100, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> > > But we all know that the GPL is a license-not-a-contract, and so UCC
> > > and related case law simply doesn't apply.
> >
> > Do we? I thought that a license was a contract.
>
> Everyone who is neither blind nor an idiot knows for certain that the
> GPL is a *LICENSE NOT A CONTRACT* -- Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen
> have clarified that fact at least a hundred times.
What purpose do you feel calling a person "blind" or an "idiot" serves?
I don't think you are contributing anything to this discussion.
In fact, if you were to pull up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License as I have now
done, you would see:
The GPL was designed as a license, rather than a contract. In some
Common Law jurisdictions, the legal distinction between a license and
a contract is an important one: contracts are enforceable by contract
law, whereas the GPL, as a license, is enforced under the terms of
copyright law. However, this distinction is not useful in the many
jurisdictions where there are no differences between contracts and
licences, such as Civil Law systems.
Further reading will show that most of Europe, Japan, and Louisiana have
Civil Law systems.
> "This right to exclude implies an equally large power to license--that
> is, to grant permission to do what would otherwise be forbidden.
> Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain
> within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised,
> but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the
> license permits."
That statement, if true, would appear to be valid only in 49 of the
United States and parts of Europe, apparently.
-- John
Reply to: