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Re: Open source licenses are /actually/ contracts?!?


From: Tim Tyler
Subject: Re: Open source licenses are /actually/ contracts?!?
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:20:58 GMT
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0a1 (Windows/20060724)

Alexander Terekhov wrote:

Which license are you talking about? The [L]GPL (both 2 and 3) purports to impose a whole bunch of covenants ("conditions" but not "conditions precedent") upon licensees. See, for example

http://www.actonline.org/library/GPLv3-Contract-or-Copyright.html

"Accordingly, the FSF drafted Paragraph 4 to require the automatic grant
 of a license to all recipients of a covered work if they “convey, or
 propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work.” The flaw in this
 provision is two-fold. First, Paragraph 4 is a contract term, not a
 license term. Because Microsoft and companies like them are not parties
 to the contract, they are not bound by it."

This seems like a straw man to me.

This section is not aimed at Microsoft.  It is aimed at Novell.

That impacts Microsoft indirectly - it makes companies
like Novell think twice before entering into patent
covenants with them - since such covenants are likely
to conflict with the wish to distribute GPLv3'd software.

Novell /is/ bound by the license - if it distributes GPLv3'd
software.
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