On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:21:35 -0800 Chris Harshman wrote: > On Dec 22, 2011, at 10:33 PM, Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> wrote: > > The other part is less clear to me and it refers to contracts rather > > than licenses, but the document author seems to think it applies to > > the GPL. > > How is a license not a contract? Please let's not re-open this can of worms! ;-) As far as I understand (from previous long discussions on this same list), it all depends on the jurisdiction you are talking about. Or, in other words, on the definition of the word "contract". I seem to recall that, in some jurisdictions, a "contract" is defined in such a way that a unilateral grant of permissions does not qualify. In some other jurisdictions, a unilateral grant of permissions is instead a special case of "contract". Moreover, there's the open issue of whether Free Software licenses are actually unilateral grants of permissions. Some people think they are, some other people point to specific parts (such as the disclaimers of warranty, if I recall correctly) of well-known Free Software licenses, in order to prove that they in fact ask for something in return for the granted permissions and are therefore *not* (only) unilateral grants of permissions... I think that, as far as the issue currently under discussion is concerned, we should only try to understand what the Slovakian term used in the Slovakian laws (and here translated into the English word "contract") means in the Slovakian jurisdiction. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
Attachment:
pgp3TawI3VxEU.pgp
Description: PGP signature