Revocable GPL (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Revocable GPL (Groklaw)

Posted Jan 31, 2008 14:13 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Revocable GPL (Groklaw) by nix
Parent article: The Non-Revocable GPL (Groklaw)

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.

(Log in to post comments)

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.