Gpland [LWN.net]

Gpland

Posted Dec 12, 2003 19:19 UTC (Fri) by jre (guest, #2807)
In reply to: Gpland by danw6144
Parent article: Bob Young writes a letter to Darl

I've read it. I believe I understand it. And, as I said in reply to your post above, you seem to be up in arms over an obvious point which was never in dispute.

Prof. Mickey Davis is right -- a license is a "unilateral contract" which derives meaning and force from contact law.

Richard Stallman is right -- GPL licensors do not claim that licensees have made any promises in return.

And Prof. Eben Moglen is right -- the GPL does not require contract enforcement in order to work.

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Gpland

Posted Dec 12, 2003 21:15 UTC (Fri) by danw6144 (guest, #14336) [Link]

The point is the GPL may fall under mixed federal / state law interpretation.
There is a vast body of contract case law out there and it varies by
the fifty states.

See the decision Procd, Inc. v. Zeidenberg. It appears four federal circuits
are ready to accept a mixed federal-copyright / state-contract approach to
enforcement of software license.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER:
Before the eyes of all you GNU/Linux flamers glaze
over and your mouse fingers convulse:

1) I am a physicist by training ... not a lawyer.
2) I have great admiration for the leaders in the
open source and free software communities.
3) I never believe anything I'm told by anyone
without first applying methods of skeptical analysis
and neither should you.
4) I am a card carrying member of the Free Software
Foundation (membership # 1550).
5) Should the FSF revoke my membership and return
my contribution, I shall just use it to support the
development efforts at the BSD group.
6) Micro$oft screwed me and I've been pissed
at them ever since 1994.
7) I dual boot Linux 2.4 and FreeBSD 5.0.

If you still insist on flaming me, you should know
that I have powerful friends in Washington, Beijing
and Moscow.