Re: Java, GPL and CDDL
"John Halton" <johnhalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/11/2007, Alexander Terekhov <alexander.terekhov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yeah, sort of vexed. But have you ever noticed "GPL is a license not a
> > contract" folks citing ANY authority to back that legal nonsense
> > claim? Consider:
> >
> > [lots and lots of case citations]
>
> It may or may not be correct, but I don't see how it is a "nonsense".
> It is certainly possible (under common law systems at least) to have a
> non-contractual licence. Whether the GPL falls into that category, and
> what the consequences of that are, is a different question, and one
> which I'm not sure your citations answer.
There is nothing like a "license" in the usual law systems.
The GPL is a contract for this and other reasons.
> Anyway, on reflection I'm not sure it makes a huge difference to the
> principles involved even if the GPL is held to be a contract. Under
> English law, at least, you could probably put an argument together
> saying that the release of software under the GPL constitutes an
> "offer to the world" by the original licensor. The outcome remains
> essentially the same, as regards the argument in my previous email.
Note that the program in question seems to be a work from a French
person. For this reason, European (French) right applies.
If you talk to lawyers and ask them about the GPL, they will tell you that
the GPL is a contract offer that needs to be explicitely acepted by the
licensee. This could be done either by sending a textual agreement back to the
owner of the code or by an implicit (non-verbal) agreement. In Germany the
latter is called: "Konkludentes Verhalten".
Anyway, in Europe you cannot agree on a contract that you do not yet know and
for this reason, a text like "GPLv2 or any later" is void.
Jörg
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EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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