Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Is the GNU license enforceable?
Message-ID: <1989Aug2.230724.7852@twwells.com>
Date: 2 Aug 89 23:07:24 GMT
References: <10031@fluke.COM>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 24

In article <10031@fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth)
opens his mouth and inserts his foot, so:
: Is the GNU license enforceable?  You bet it is.  The GNU license is a
: contract.

It tries to look like a licence (a kind of contract) but it is not. A
contract, to be valid, requires, as you note in your next paragraph,
acceptance by the contractee of the terms. And there are specific
legal requirements on what constitutes acceptance. The GNU "licence"
does not meet them.

: Accept the GNU license by using the GNU software and you agree to those
: terms, unpaletable though they are.  You are giving up a bunch of your
: rights, but the law lets you do that if you want to.

Using the GNU software does not constitute acceptance of the GNU
"licence". No matter what the thing says. The most that GNU can ever
get away with, with that "licence", is to have it treated as an
assertion of their copyright; the only enforceable aspects of it are
those that are enforceable under copyright law.

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Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
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