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Would You Die To Respect a Software License?
Julie188 writes "Some 2,000 licenses cover the 230,000+ projects in Black Duck's open source knowledge base. While 10 licenses comprise 93% of the software, that leaves 1,980-odd licenses for the other 3% — and some of them have really crazy conditions. The Death and Repudiation License, for instance, requires the user to be dead."
That would be a good description of copyright, and thus copyright licenses, but not contracts in general. The terms of a contract are merely conditions which you require to be met before you will voluntarily give the other party some of your property, which you are in no way obligated to do. No matter what the terms may be, they impose no expense on others; one is always free to ignore the offer should one find the terms unpalatable. Licenses are similar, but the copyrights which give licenses their power are artificial social-engineering constructs which only exist at the expense of others.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat