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Revocable GPL (Groklaw)Revocable GPL (Groklaw)Posted Jan 31, 2008 9:01 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)In reply to: Revocable GPL (Groklaw) by rahvin Parent article: The Non-Revocable GPL (Groklaw)
As I said at it's heart, regardless of how much the FSF wants to avoid it, the GPL includes with it's license an implied contract.This is unlikely to be true in England (Scotland has quite different law in this area and I don't know it). You can't contract with some other party, even impliedly when you don't know who they are and have no idea that they've accepted the contract or even that they exist: but copyright licenses can be granted in that situation perfectly well if the license says they can be. If you reject a copyright license, you can't redistribute the work. What would the effect of rejecting your implied license be? If it's not the same, something is probably wrong with your reasoning. (IANAL.)
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Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Jan 31, 2008 14:13 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] Come on, back to basics... Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball. Co. The Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. had no idea Carlill had accepted their offer. In fact they didn't even realise (or so they told the court) that they'd made an offer at all. She showed up and demanded the money, and they sent her away so she sued them. And she won. The court saw no reason in principle to nullify contracts which one party is unaware of until the terms are fulfilled. Nor to disregard contractual offers made to the general public (in this case in the form of a newspaper advert). Just because when we think of a contract we imagine a signed piece of paper, doesn't mean the law sees it that way. All that's needed is a legitimate offer (including "consideration" of some sort) and acceptance of that offer by one or more other parties. The situation in which one party is oblivious to the contract is now commonplace, and even situations in which /neither/ party is actively aware of a contract formed between them can occur. Only when something goes wrong do any /people/ need to be informed of the situation at all, since usually the contract is mutually beneficial and everyone is content.
Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Jan 31, 2008 21:00 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] This may well be a US-vs-English law difference, but my understanding is that `contracts which one party is unaware of' is meaningless in English law (I can't even figure out what on earth it might mean in everyday English). If one party offers something to another one in a newspaper advert, that other party presumably must communicate with the first one in order to get whatever-it-is. As soon as that communication takes place, you'd have an implied contract in English law. (I think. The fact that both parties are aware of the contract and that it would apply to the other party *might* be sufficient. IANAL.)
Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Feb 1, 2008 21:52 UTC (Fri) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] > This may well be a US-vs-English law difference, but my understanding is that `contracts which one party is unaware of' is meaningless in English law (I can't even figure out what on earth it might mean in everyday English). This case defined the concept of a unilateral offer. The issue was that although Carbolic claimed to have been unaware of having made an offer (of compensation for the smoke balls having proved inefficiacious), in legal terms they met every qualification of having done so (precision of offered consideration - £1000 placed in a bank account for the purpose; precision of audience - the general public; specification of the means of acceptance - use of the smoke balls). And English law does presume competence. Having thus met the conditions of acceptance, Mrs Carlill was entitled to succeed in her claim against them. Advertisers have been rather more careful to state and ensure that they are in no way making offers since then.
Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Feb 3, 2008 20:18 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Hence the regular apperance of offers on cereal packets consisting of tickets with an explicitly-stated value of 0.000001p and so on.
Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Jan 31, 2008 14:31 UTC (Thu) by gyles (guest, #1600) [Link] I think there's also the issue of 'consideration' - a contract must be a two way deal.
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