You have a gross misunderstanding of the term "contract". If I sign a contract to, for instance, buy a car, do you think I am "voluntarily" making payments?
The vast bulk of contracts (in fact all contracts that have the proper language, declare themselves to be legal contracts, and include two willing parties) have legal teeth. That does not make a contract a law in itself, but it certainly is governed by contract law. Even if you only execute a contract by a handshake (although you might have difficulty proving terms, agreement, and so on).
BTW, that applies to the GPL, too. It is *illegal*, not just unethical, for me to take code from a GPL project and disobey the terms of the GPL.
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You have a gross misunderstanding of the term "contract". If I sign a contract to, for instance, buy a car, do you think I am "voluntarily" making payments? The vast bulk of contracts (in fact all contracts that have the proper language, declare themselves to be legal contracts, and include two willing parties) have legal teeth. That does not make a contract a law in itself, but it certainly is governed by contract law. Even if you only execute a contract by a handshake (although you might have difficulty proving terms, agreement, and so on). BTW, that applies to the GPL, too. It is *illegal*, not just unethical, for me to take code from a GPL project and disobey the terms of the GPL.