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meeting of the minds
meeting of the minds
Posted Aug 22, 2003 15:59 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)In reply to: Aiming at the GPL? by brouhaha
Parent article: Aiming at the GPL?
Why is there certainly no meeting of the minds?
It looks to me like there's as much meeting of the minds as with any other public (unilateral) contract, and GPL probably meets all the tests of being a legal contract.
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meeting of the minds
Posted Aug 22, 2003 18:50 UTC (Fri) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]
Why is there certainly no meeting of the minds?Because for a contract to be valid, both parties have to receive something of value. With the GPL, the licensee fairly clearly gets something of value, the right to copy the code, but the licensor's value (if any) is very abstract and probably not legally sufficient to make the contract enforceable.
However, it doesn't NEED to be an enforceable contract per se. It works fine as a conditional grant of rights. No one can be forced to accept it, but if they don't accept it, they don't get any right to redistribute the GPL'd code.
Disclaimer: IANAL.