The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement

Posted Sep 14, 2016 8:33 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement by Wol
Parent article: The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement

Depends in great detail on the right in question; most rights of a purchaser can be signed away, as long as you the consumer are giving informed agreement to the signing away of the right in question. The hard part is getting that informed agreement - to successfully get a consumer to sign away some of the stickier rights, you must spend quite a lot of effort telling the consumer that they're not getting what they want. For example, to sign away the right to a functioning product, you must ensure that the consumer knows that the product is not useful for the purposes they have in mind, and that you don't believe it's possible for the consumer to make it useful (but, on the other hand, this is how you can sell a faulty car to a consumer who just wants it for scrap value - as long as you're honest about what parts you've removed, you can sell a car saying "engine's bust and I don't know why - it started giving out black smoke and not making power. I've not taken any parts off the car, but I don't believe it's economically repairable; at the very least, it needs a new engine").