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  • From: Andrew Pimlott <pimlott AT MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
  • To: TDS Development Group <freetds AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Sybase TDS Specification
  • Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 15:21:29 -0400 (EDT)


On 15 Sep 1999, Steven Work wrote:
> Andrew Pimlott <pimlott AT MATH.HARVARD.EDU> writes:
> > On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Greg Beeley wrote:
> > > If we go asserting that 'click-n-sign' EULAs on the Internet might be
> > > invalid,
> > > where does that leave things like the GPL and LGPL?
> >
> > It does not affect them. If you reject the GPL, you wind up with rights
> > granted to you by copyright law, which would not permit you to distribute
> > copies at all. In other words, the purpose of the GPL is to grant you
> > _more_ rights than you would otherwise have.
>
> Please do not speak nonsense in a public forum, unintentionally. I
> also do not understand the nuances (it's not my field), but:

I will make only this one statement and then drop it.

Before I address any specific points, let me note that we seem to agree on
my main point, which was that if the GPL is found to be in any way
"invalid", people would not suddenly have the legal right to do whatever
they please with GPL'd software.

> Copyright grants the holder the right to place restrictions on use and
> distribution under contract law. The copyright holder can choose to
> establish just about any reasonable terms s/he wishes; thus RMS's
> unusual conditions in the (L)GPL.

> "Copyright law" doesn't talk about rights or burdens on the user or
> distributor of someone else's copyrighted work; it says the copyright
> holder can place terms (under contract law) on such users or
> distributors.

I don't understand how you claim that copyright law doesn't address the
rights of the possessor (other than the author) of copyrighted material.

Most of the copyrighted materials that you and I own does not come with a
contract. But obviously our rights concerning these possessions are
different from those concerning other possessions. What if not copyright
law spells this out? In my understanding, copyright law provides
something akin to a default contract. Basically, you can do anything but
copy.

So, if you reject the GPL, you have a copyrighted resource without any
contract. This permits you to use the resource yourself, but not copy it.

I believe that copyright law also mandates some rights that may not be
restricted by a contract. For example, the right to make an archive
copy. However, I do not have any evidence on hand to support this, so I
may be wrong.

> If copyright is *not* asserted, the
> work belongs to the public domain and no restrictions on use or
> distribution apply.

Most people say that you should assume that a copyright is held, unless it
is explicitly disclaimed. I don't know what precedent may be behind this.

At any rate, copyright of GPL'd software is always asserted unless the
author blunders badly.

Andrew




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