Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL?

Posted Jan 27, 2026 5:20 UTC (Tue) by donald.buczek (subscriber, #112892)
In reply to: Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL? by kleptog
Parent article: SFC v. VIZIO: who can enforce the GPL?

> From the point of EU/Dutch law, a copyright license is not a contract, not even an implicit one, because there is no offer, negotiation or acceptance.

I am fairly certain that this is not generally correct and that a license is always a contract, at least in German law.

With FOSS, the accompanying license file is usually a public offer and the contract is accepted “impliedly,” i.e., through conclusive action.

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Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL?

Posted Jan 27, 2026 9:29 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

In English law, there's a nuance that only lawyers really need to care about: most licences are technically offers to contract, and you're not bound by them if you can show that you did not accept the terms (but that requires you showing that your behaviour was lawful in the absence of an accepted contract).

The details of what that means is a fun bit of minutiae for a lawyer (and was a fun chat to have with one), but for all useful purposes, you might as well treat a FOSS licence as a contract - the interesting edge cases all crop up where the licence restricts something that is lawful in the absence of the licence as a whole (e.g. if it purports to place restrictions on reverse engineering).

Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL?

Posted Jan 27, 2026 10:11 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> the interesting edge cases all crop up where the licence restricts something that is lawful in the absence of the licence as a whole (e.g. if it purports to place restrictions on reverse engineering).

Especially in a EULA, if the customer has already paid for the software before they agree to the licence! As I have a habit of saying, that's fraud. With a small "f", not necessarily in law, but a pretty clear case of "obtaining money/whatever by deception".

Cheers,
Wol