FreeTDS Development Group

[Greg Stark <gsstark AT mit.edu>]

Steven Work <steve AT renlabs.com> writes:

> 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:

This isn't nonsense, this is absolutely 100% correct. The GPL grants
additional rights that are normally reserved by copyright law for the
copyright holder. If you don't accept the GPL you are waiving those additional
rights granted by it but are still free to do things that are normally legal,
such as use the software.

> "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.
> 
> Or something very much like that.

No, it's pretty much exactly the opposite of what you're saying. Copyright law
does talk about the rights and burdens reserved for authors and doesn't talk
about contracts owners can enter into with users.

In fact most works under copyright law come with no contract whatsoever; think
of books. You don't sign any contract when you receive books, you simply don't
have the right to copy and resell them because copyright law reserves that
right for the author. The only reason they would need a shrink-wrap license
would be if they wanted to restrict you from doing things that you normally do
have a legal right to do, such as read the book more than once, or publish
commentaries on the book, etc.

I assume you're just making logical leaps based on SPA propaganda and reading
too many shrink-wrap licenses, but:

> Please accept my apologies in advance if you intended to mislead.  ;^)

likewise :)

-- 
greg