Copyright doesn't change whether or not the fruit of someone else's labor is yours to take or not. They wrote the software. With or without copyright, it would still be theirs to do with as they choose.
It's entirely fallacious to believe that copyright is the only tool available to producers of software or that it itself creates or destroys any inherent morality in the wrongful taking of someone's work.
Without copyright, companies would simply use stronger contracts and economic tools to enforce exclusivity. It is the natural and inevitable consequence of a society that promotes individual rights over collective rights, and that simply will not change without copyright.
Very few companies have enough security to prevent that, and there would be no repercussions for insiders leaking the code. Are you kidding? Copyright has nothing to do with controlling leaks--without it, people would still be ruined financially for being part of the chain. It would be substantially more controlled and compartmentalized, not only to mitigate damages, but to track down sources of leaks. No repercussions for insiders. That's rich.
Even if somehow people couldn't get the source, they could still use Evilcorp's programs free of charge. And Evilcorp would aggressively shut down unauthorized users, because at that sum of money and that narrow a set of customers, it would be easy to target and disable those who steal.
At the end of the day, competition would ensure that a fair price for support would be reached. Only if the curve for technical support was shorter than the release cycle, and only if a company had the resources to train in the product to begin with, and then only if the third-party support companies were licensed to do the support. Abolishing copyright wouldn't change licensing and contract law. Without copyright, the software companies would still own the software and be able to set whatever terms it so desired on the product--software doesn't cease to be a commodity without copyright.
If that changed due to lack of copyrights, free solutions would get created out of necessity. There's no such thing as a free solution to an industry-wide problem. Publishing houses are not going to sit on their thumbs while some unreliable volunteer coders slap together some half-assed DTP software all the while refusing to bend to reality. They're going to hire a bunch of people to do it their way, to function as they expect, and they're going to pay for it. That large sum of money will further secure their interest in a proprietary product.
You can't eliminate copyright and expect it to solve any problem. Like any other tool, it is a function of its use in society. You can strip the law down completely if you want, but it will not matter one iota if you don't change the people behind it. Society will use the tools available to it, and capitalism encourages individualism--in all forms. It cannot be separated into "times when we like the effect" and "times where it sucks." As with all things, you have to take the good with the bad. Humans will always complicate the law, because it is an inevitable conclusion that issues will be confused, boundaries blurred, and loopholes explored. A "simple" legal system is not possible with a coparticipatory arrangement. It is only achievable through authoritarianism.
In the case of the damn iphone, if you unlocked the thing using a software hack as most people did, then you did not void your warranty unlike a hardware hack which does That's not accurate. The issue here is not a software hack on the flash storage medium, which can certainly be repaired and reverted. The issue is a firmware modification, which has consistently been held to be a hardware component. If you load a customized BIOS and then flash, destroying your mainboard, you're SOL.
There are services that can sometimes recover or replace that bit of hardware for you, and sometimes the manufacturer might even offer to replace it, but they are under no legal obligation to do so, as you have voided your warranty.
It is not Apple's obligation to examine the state of your phone before applying an update. As long as the update is functional with the device as it is intended and anticipated, they're in the clear. If you use it outside its intended purposes and with no warranty of fitness claim, your warranty is void.
Even within the context of Magnuson-Moss, disclaimers are permissable of exactly this nature. The "third party refusal" section is posted out of context as an excerpt of a product liability warranty, not of a hybridized warranty including all service arrangements (where service tying is permitted, with a few common law exceptions).
Just to throw another wrench in the works, look at the heading for the section--it's for product warranties, not for warranties that include service arrangements. It's to prevent them from requiring that you pay for service from the vendor. If the vendor is offering you free service in the warranty period, as Apple is here, you'd have to be an idiot to go pay someone else to do what may well be an inferior job, hence it isn't discussed in Magnuson-Moss. There's no vendor tie-in when you're not being forced to buy anything further.
The patent holder couldn't issue a GPL v3-only "patent license" without migrating to GPL 3. Thus, they would no longer be in the "I am not adopting v3" camp.
It's not possible to fulfill both in your scenario.
If use was granted by GPL v2, that's it. It is forever available as GPL v2 in its entirety.
Setting aside the fact that the GPL is *not* in any way a patent agreement, the patent holder would have to switch to GPL3 in order to do that, which the developers have explicitly NOT done.
If they were to do so, it would be a moot point, since that would involve them taking their work to GPL v3. Yours is a cyclical argument.
Hence the GPL v2 or later means that people can use or distribute the code under either license. However, since the GPL v3 is far more strict about dependency licensing, I am willing to bet that a lot of projects cannot effectively move even if they are GPL v2 or later. Precisely. And since the copryight holder has no way of knowing which license was accepted by the licensee, there is no legal way for them to enforce GPL3 terms at all, since they are contrary to and more limited than the broadest license available.
You can't enforce anything beyond the broadest license simultaneously available. All the other side has to do is say that they licensed it under GPLv2 and be done with it. What they choose to license their derivative work under has no bearing on with which license they received the original code.
But this is not the same line of argument as the "GPL2 or later *is* GPL3" approach--it's not. The copyright holder has not moved to GPL3, so it's still GPL2. Unless the copyright holder changes the license, the more "liberal" GPL2 license is still the controlling one.
It's not the order of the licenses that determines importance. Given multiple discrete licensing schemes available at the user's option, only the least restrictive license controls. Think of it this way: if you were presented with a choice of being able to keep 90% of profit or 50% at your option, the licensor cannot complain until you try to take 91%.
In short, anything that differs from GPL v2 can't be enforced, and any terms which are contrary or more restrictive than others concurrently available are simply invalid. That software stays GPL2. You can elect to make your derivative work GPL v3, but that doesn't change the fact that the owners surveyed here have elected not to transition to GPL v3.
If by fun you mean "rejecting outright and thus saving the legal system from one more piece of pointless litigation," you're absolutely correct.
Being able to unlock a cellular SIM due to a copyright exception has no bearing whatsoever on warranty validity. If you modify the firmware of your PC and it breaks, that's your problem. If you modify the firmware of your cell phone and it breaks, it's your problem.
In addition to the other well-developed applications about the warranty's compliance, here's another: the section of Magnuson-Moss as quoted by the "no tying" crowd covers product warranties for parts and workmanship. It does not apply in the same way and to the same extent as a service warranty, which all iPhones possess. It does not apply to software warranty claims at all.
his point was that a fishing license or a drivers license isn't a contract not to be sued by the state. Sure it is. By law, the state has passed good law saying that it's illegal to fish. By getting a license which they make available, they waive their right to prosecute you for that illegal behavior, because the entity with the right to prosecute has specifically given you permission to do that thing.
The thing that's most disingenuous about the license-contract discussion put forth by Molgen and others is that a license is grounded in statutory law--you buy certain rights. Once you require some particular action from the licensee and you require them to agree to terms not codified in the law, you've formed a contract.
The GPL is a license for personal users. It is, however, a license agreement for redistributors. It requires that they surrender rights they would otherwise have under copyright law, given that the person exercising the GPL gave the licensee the right to prepare derivative works. In that case, the licensee would hold the copyright to that derivative work and enjoy all the benefits and privileges therein under the law. The GPL modifies the law such that you have to agree to surrender your future statutory rights.
Something I am looking at is where the GPL says you have to agree to the terms or you don't have a license. So once you stop following the terms, the license stops, or so they want you to think. It does terminate (stop). Just like elsewhere though, someone has to enforce the termination. Because the GPL contains conditional terms, there is room for substantial disagreement between parties about whether a condition is invoked or not, and so the GPL, language not withstanding, cannot run on autopilot--the FSF wants the flexibility of this nebulous interpretation, but it is inconsistent with law.
do you agree to the terms once when distributing the software many times or do you renew your agreement each and every time you distribute. That depends on whether the the GPL is determined to be an option contract or not. It could go either way, but the "the GPL doesn't apply until you distribute" argument around here (while technically inaccurate--the GPL's restrictions don't apply until distribution) clearly supports the option contract stance. This is directly contradictory with the same group's claim for copyright infringement, however, since the licensor can't sue while the option contract is open.
Put in a simpler way, if you file suit before filing notice of termination (or too quickly afterward to comply with DP), you're suing for copyright infringement while the GPL is still legally in effect, thus jumping the gun and breaching your agreement. You have to establish that the GPL was terminated, that licensee did not immediately relicense the work upon termination (the GPL doesn't say that violators are permanently debarred from using that code again, so they could argue re-licensure), and that the licensee KNEW of its violation and did not reasonably believe they were in compliance. Reasonable belief, of course, being an objective term determined by the trier of fact.
people who are lawyers [...] would say that the GPL is a licence, not a contract The problem with this is that there is no such thing as "license law." All licenses are governed by contract law. What a license is not is a bilateral contract. However, all software licenses are contracts--you can review any case in the field and find reference to contracts, be it Netscape, ProCD, Mortenson, Gateway, or any of the other seminal cases in software licensing/EULAs.
A license is a grant of rights, and while that seems to be a fair case here, the trick is to remember that there exists a distinction between a license and a license agreement, the latter of which clearly being a contract. To wit, the most common criticism in courts of certain kinds of unenforceable provisions in EULAs is called raising a contract of adhesion defense. It is eminently clear that this defense could not work without establishing the EULA as a contract.
It is true that the GPL lacks consideration nearly universally required of contracts, but only to the extent that you're looking at the grant of rights to a personal user. This is not the instant case--we're clearly talking about a commercial use. Restrictions on the actions of licensees required in order to comply with the license do constitute consideration.
Groklaw isn't wrong, they're just misapplying the facts and being somewhat disingenuous in their approach. Their view is correct given a narrow set of circumstances, but those circumstances are exceeded in every legal challenge contemplated against the GPL.
You can easily tell that this is the case in the statement, "So when you hear that the GPL is viral and can force proprietary code to become GPL, which a couple of lawyers have been saying, you'll know that isn't true." Obviously, this is not accurate. If the GPL never forced proprietary code, it would not need to require providing code at all. They are constructing the meaning that code derived from GPL code isn't proprietary to begin with, but this is in direct contradiction with all theories of invention and intellectual labor--your original idea, no matter what its inspiration, is OF COURSE proprietary until you share it. The theory posited here tries to get around that.
Yeah, don't bother. Slashdot doesn't build its legal theories on reality, law, or reason. It certainly doesn't reward the truth in a rational discussion with a fair chance to be heard.
This entire post is one-sided and a perfect example of why I try to limit my posting here. People don't want to hear the truth or find out that their assumptions are bad law; they certainly don't want to hear from actual lawyers and legal professionals, because whenever we contribute, we're shouted down below the groupthink and subjected to bad lawyer jokes and broken English mockeries and the worst analogies ever written.
Tell me, if a software license is not a contract, does that mean you agree that EULAs cannot possibly be contracts of adhesion, and therefore surrender your primary legal defense against unfair EULA terms?
This is why Slashdot is a poor source for legal information, because people like you post ridiculous theories on it. On the contrary, look in the mirror. "My" theories (actually the Court's--pick your poison: SCOTUS, F., Cal.) only look ridiculous when standing on your wobbly island of misdirection and misgivings.
a license is by definition one sided. There is no negotiation. There is no requirement for negotiation. There is no requirement for two "sides" (whatever it is you mean by that.
There is a requirement that two or more parties agree to be bound by the same terms. That's it. There is such a thing as unilateral offer and unilateral contract. A bilateral contract is but one possible kind of contract, and certainly not the only one.
When I sign a mortgage contract "accepting" the "offer" of the lender, and then break the contract by non-payment, THEY CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT???? No, they can do lots of things about it. They can't accuse you of stealing the house, though, because they GAVE it to you with certain terms. You broke those terms, and they're entitled to have the house back, but they can't pretend that you never had any right to be in possession of the house in the first place.
Absolutely. But you can't get in the way of a Slashdot fantasy-fest.
There's absolutely no one with any experience in the legal system that would agree to the parent comment modded to +5. A license is not a contract? Hello! Just looking it up in a legal dictionary would stop that show of asshattery. Nevermind that the crowd in this thread won't recognize that simple fact, doesn't understand the mechanics of contract execution, and has not a single legal leg to stand on--they're going to promote the viewpoint they really really wish made any kind of objective sense or had even a single authority to support it.
...that is, giving notice in advance that performing certain actions will terminate the licence. Absolutely. But you must still sue for breach of contract. The terms for termination are within the contract. There is no legal support for pretending the contract never existed, which is what your peers are arguing. No matter how many concerned Slashdot moderators can be rallied up to mod me down, it doesn't change the fact that it's true.
This is why the GPL going to court is so truly terrifying--just look at how one-sided the moderation in this thread is. Moderation is not supposed to be about promoting things that agree with you. It's supposed to be about raising points in the discussion, particularly when it introduces a flaw in something.
If the GPL is to be improved, it must be considered in the context of an actual legal system and a standard of transactions that truly exists in the law. It cannot rely on what is intended to occur, or that Slashdotters want it interpreted in a certain way, despite any legal or logical support for it.
Where the hell do you get the ridiculous idea that a license is an agreement not to sue? Law school. If you'd like to confirm for yourself without coughing up $150k, you could just take your misguided ramblings to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License.
Given your lack of authorities, it's just particularly sad that a community will grant you credibility just for saying what people want to hear. Thank goodness we don't live in a democracy.
Where do you get any of your cracked-out interpretations? Certainly nowhere that qualifies you to give them.
Where's the license that grants you legal access to read this copyrighted material? You don't need a license to read. You need a license to use, prepare derivative works, and modify.
You certainly have a bizarro-world concept of copyright law. Only when viewed through your twisted lenses arguing against points that no one makes. But that basically describes the whole of Slashdot and the "anti-IP" movement, such as it is. Fortunately for the rest of us, the sound policy and interpretation is left to those qualified.
and if you do have assent then you have an acceptance of all the terms of the contract - including the part that says the license doesn't exist in the absence of performance. Well, no. The license exists. There's no way to go back in time to make it not exist. That cat is already out of the bag.
Until you give notice of termination of the license, it is still in effect and you're still not bound by your legal promise not to sue for infringement. There is no precedent for what you describe. You wouldn't need breach of contract in the law at all if you could say "you didn't comply and therefore there never was a contract." The license doesn't have to say "we will tell you when we feel you are not living up to your end"--it's an implicit requirement in all contracts. Once entered into, they are binding until terminated, and the party doing the terminating can't just up and sue without giving notice that the license has been terminated.
Put another way, if you agree to pick no more than six of my apples a day for a month, and on the third day you pick seven, but no one says anything to you, and you keep picking six for the rest of the month, I can't sue you for 30 days of stolen apples. I can't even sue you for 27 days of stealing apples, even if I write into the contract that I will sue you for conversion, trespass, and larceny if you fail to perform fully. I can sue you for breach of contract, though.
You are well and truly lost. "Offeror of the download" doesn't exist--but nice try at using some legal language. Offeror is a contract term for the entity granting the license (i.e. the copyright owner).
The downloader is free to do with it as he or she wishes, totally ignoring the GPL unless he or she wishes to further redistribute the code This is an amusing fiction that always comes up here on Slashdot. It really makes judges and contract lawyers laugh. You can't release something without a license into the public without surrendering all of your rights to it--if there's no license, there's no transfer of rights. You simply can't do it--either you license your copyright or you don't. There is no third option.
What you mean to say is that the GPL imposes no restrictions on people for personal use. You are in full compliance with the GPL no matter what you do as a personal user. You can't ignore the GPL--it's the only thing that grants you legal access to the copyrighted material. You can ignore the restrictions that don't apply to you, which, as a personal user, is all of them.
You are rather imprecise and confused as to mechanics and theory of the law, but it's amusing to watch you try.
You make some good points, but not in opposition to my claims. The points you raise about the intent of the GPL are accurate, but not about the reality. This is why you want to avoid litigation wherever possible on your license/contract terms--you're usually confronted with the reality that part of what you wrote is unenforceable.
The GPL's termination clause specifies that non-compliance with the terms revokes all permissions granted, You need to be careful with the word "revoke"--it does no such thing. It terminates the permission. It does not travel back in time and erase the contract from having existed, however (which is what the aim was). To do so would be unconscionable and thus void.
All of this supposes that the GPL is a contract, rather than a unilateral grant of a limited license. Again, you need to be more judicious with your language--a unilateral grant can be terminated, but it can't be reversed. You would first have give notice of termination of the grant, wait for the licensee to violate it, and get an injunction to stop use after substantial noncompliance with the termination of the grant. Then and only then could you pursue copyright infringement. You can't go back to a time before you gave notice of termination and sue as though it were a straight-up infringement, when the grant was still in effect.
This is all part of why the goal has been to keep the GPL out of court. You're operating on the unfounded assumption that a noncompliant action is an automatic termination of a license--something that has no significant precedent in the law. Breaking the terms is grounds for termination, but the licensor must still do the actual termination. It's written with the hope that it will ride on autopilot, but that's not usually how it works.
Nope, it's not a contract. It's a conditional license, the granting and continuation of which is conditional upon complying with its terms. And how, pray tell, do you enforce a license under the law? (Hint: a license, i.e. an agreement not to sue, involves a meeting of the minds around specific terms and requirements). That's right, CONTRACTS.
Offer of the license is not conditional. It's right there on the website. Should the offeror wish to exercise some limit on making the offer, they have every right to do that, but that means individually entering into agreements.
As soon as you break the terms you have revoked the license yourself, and may no longer distribute under it. Okay. I'll roll with it. Since you revoked the license, you're responsible for enforcing that revocation...on yourself. Crash and burn!
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, no.
Copyright doesn't change whether or not the fruit of someone else's labor is yours to take or not. They wrote the software. With or without copyright, it would still be theirs to do with as they choose.
It's entirely fallacious to believe that copyright is the only tool available to producers of software or that it itself creates or destroys any inherent morality in the wrongful taking of someone's work.
Without copyright, companies would simply use stronger contracts and economic tools to enforce exclusivity. It is the natural and inevitable consequence of a society that promotes individual rights over collective rights, and that simply will not change without copyright.
Yes, stealing.
You know, taking something to which you're not entitled. Stealing. It's a pretty common word.
You can't eliminate copyright and expect it to solve any problem. Like any other tool, it is a function of its use in society. You can strip the law down completely if you want, but it will not matter one iota if you don't change the people behind it. Society will use the tools available to it, and capitalism encourages individualism--in all forms. It cannot be separated into "times when we like the effect" and "times where it sucks." As with all things, you have to take the good with the bad. Humans will always complicate the law, because it is an inevitable conclusion that issues will be confused, boundaries blurred, and loopholes explored. A "simple" legal system is not possible with a coparticipatory arrangement. It is only achievable through authoritarianism.
There are services that can sometimes recover or replace that bit of hardware for you, and sometimes the manufacturer might even offer to replace it, but they are under no legal obligation to do so, as you have voided your warranty.
It is not Apple's obligation to examine the state of your phone before applying an update. As long as the update is functional with the device as it is intended and anticipated, they're in the clear. If you use it outside its intended purposes and with no warranty of fitness claim, your warranty is void.
Even within the context of Magnuson-Moss, disclaimers are permissable of exactly this nature. The "third party refusal" section is posted out of context as an excerpt of a product liability warranty, not of a hybridized warranty including all service arrangements (where service tying is permitted, with a few common law exceptions).
And you can still use your iPhone, just not on a cellular network and not with the latest software.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner.
Just to throw another wrench in the works, look at the heading for the section--it's for product warranties, not for warranties that include service arrangements. It's to prevent them from requiring that you pay for service from the vendor. If the vendor is offering you free service in the warranty period, as Apple is here, you'd have to be an idiot to go pay someone else to do what may well be an inferior job, hence it isn't discussed in Magnuson-Moss. There's no vendor tie-in when you're not being forced to buy anything further.
The patent holder couldn't issue a GPL v3-only "patent license" without migrating to GPL 3. Thus, they would no longer be in the "I am not adopting v3" camp.
It's not possible to fulfill both in your scenario.
If use was granted by GPL v2, that's it. It is forever available as GPL v2 in its entirety.
Setting aside the fact that the GPL is *not* in any way a patent agreement, the patent holder would have to switch to GPL3 in order to do that, which the developers have explicitly NOT done.
If they were to do so, it would be a moot point, since that would involve them taking their work to GPL v3. Yours is a cyclical argument.
You can't enforce anything beyond the broadest license simultaneously available. All the other side has to do is say that they licensed it under GPLv2 and be done with it. What they choose to license their derivative work under has no bearing on with which license they received the original code.
But this is not the same line of argument as the "GPL2 or later *is* GPL3" approach--it's not. The copyright holder has not moved to GPL3, so it's still GPL2. Unless the copyright holder changes the license, the more "liberal" GPL2 license is still the controlling one.
It's not the order of the licenses that determines importance. Given multiple discrete licensing schemes available at the user's option, only the least restrictive license controls. Think of it this way: if you were presented with a choice of being able to keep 90% of profit or 50% at your option, the licensor cannot complain until you try to take 91%.
In short, anything that differs from GPL v2 can't be enforced, and any terms which are contrary or more restrictive than others concurrently available are simply invalid. That software stays GPL2. You can elect to make your derivative work GPL v3, but that doesn't change the fact that the owners surveyed here have elected not to transition to GPL v3.
If by fun you mean "rejecting outright and thus saving the legal system from one more piece of pointless litigation," you're absolutely correct.
Being able to unlock a cellular SIM due to a copyright exception has no bearing whatsoever on warranty validity. If you modify the firmware of your PC and it breaks, that's your problem. If you modify the firmware of your cell phone and it breaks, it's your problem.
In addition to the other well-developed applications about the warranty's compliance, here's another: the section of Magnuson-Moss as quoted by the "no tying" crowd covers product warranties for parts and workmanship. It does not apply in the same way and to the same extent as a service warranty, which all iPhones possess. It does not apply to software warranty claims at all.
The thing that's most disingenuous about the license-contract discussion put forth by Molgen and others is that a license is grounded in statutory law--you buy certain rights. Once you require some particular action from the licensee and you require them to agree to terms not codified in the law, you've formed a contract.
The GPL is a license for personal users. It is, however, a license agreement for redistributors. It requires that they surrender rights they would otherwise have under copyright law, given that the person exercising the GPL gave the licensee the right to prepare derivative works. In that case, the licensee would hold the copyright to that derivative work and enjoy all the benefits and privileges therein under the law. The GPL modifies the law such that you have to agree to surrender your future statutory rights. Something I am looking at is where the GPL says you have to agree to the terms or you don't have a license. So once you stop following the terms, the license stops, or so they want you to think. It does terminate (stop). Just like elsewhere though, someone has to enforce the termination. Because the GPL contains conditional terms, there is room for substantial disagreement between parties about whether a condition is invoked or not, and so the GPL, language not withstanding, cannot run on autopilot--the FSF wants the flexibility of this nebulous interpretation, but it is inconsistent with law. do you agree to the terms once when distributing the software many times or do you renew your agreement each and every time you distribute. That depends on whether the the GPL is determined to be an option contract or not. It could go either way, but the "the GPL doesn't apply until you distribute" argument around here (while technically inaccurate--the GPL's restrictions don't apply until distribution) clearly supports the option contract stance. This is directly contradictory with the same group's claim for copyright infringement, however, since the licensor can't sue while the option contract is open.
Put in a simpler way, if you file suit before filing notice of termination (or too quickly afterward to comply with DP), you're suing for copyright infringement while the GPL is still legally in effect, thus jumping the gun and breaching your agreement. You have to establish that the GPL was terminated, that licensee did not immediately relicense the work upon termination (the GPL doesn't say that violators are permanently debarred from using that code again, so they could argue re-licensure), and that the licensee KNEW of its violation and did not reasonably believe they were in compliance. Reasonable belief, of course, being an objective term determined by the trier of fact.
A license is a grant of rights, and while that seems to be a fair case here, the trick is to remember that there exists a distinction between a license and a license agreement, the latter of which clearly being a contract. To wit, the most common criticism in courts of certain kinds of unenforceable provisions in EULAs is called raising a contract of adhesion defense. It is eminently clear that this defense could not work without establishing the EULA as a contract.
It is true that the GPL lacks consideration nearly universally required of contracts, but only to the extent that you're looking at the grant of rights to a personal user. This is not the instant case--we're clearly talking about a commercial use. Restrictions on the actions of licensees required in order to comply with the license do constitute consideration.
Groklaw isn't wrong, they're just misapplying the facts and being somewhat disingenuous in their approach. Their view is correct given a narrow set of circumstances, but those circumstances are exceeded in every legal challenge contemplated against the GPL.
You can easily tell that this is the case in the statement, "So when you hear that the GPL is viral and can force proprietary code to become GPL, which a couple of lawyers have been saying, you'll know that isn't true." Obviously, this is not accurate. If the GPL never forced proprietary code, it would not need to require providing code at all. They are constructing the meaning that code derived from GPL code isn't proprietary to begin with, but this is in direct contradiction with all theories of invention and intellectual labor--your original idea, no matter what its inspiration, is OF COURSE proprietary until you share it. The theory posited here tries to get around that.
Yeah, don't bother. Slashdot doesn't build its legal theories on reality, law, or reason. It certainly doesn't reward the truth in a rational discussion with a fair chance to be heard.
This entire post is one-sided and a perfect example of why I try to limit my posting here. People don't want to hear the truth or find out that their assumptions are bad law; they certainly don't want to hear from actual lawyers and legal professionals, because whenever we contribute, we're shouted down below the groupthink and subjected to bad lawyer jokes and broken English mockeries and the worst analogies ever written.
There is a requirement that two or more parties agree to be bound by the same terms. That's it. There is such a thing as unilateral offer and unilateral contract. A bilateral contract is but one possible kind of contract, and certainly not the only one.
Absolutely. But you can't get in the way of a Slashdot fantasy-fest.
There's absolutely no one with any experience in the legal system that would agree to the parent comment modded to +5. A license is not a contract? Hello! Just looking it up in a legal dictionary would stop that show of asshattery. Nevermind that the crowd in this thread won't recognize that simple fact, doesn't understand the mechanics of contract execution, and has not a single legal leg to stand on--they're going to promote the viewpoint they really really wish made any kind of objective sense or had even a single authority to support it.
...that is, giving notice in advance that performing certain actions will terminate the licence. Absolutely. But you must still sue for breach of contract. The terms for termination are within the contract. There is no legal support for pretending the contract never existed, which is what your peers are arguing. No matter how many concerned Slashdot moderators can be rallied up to mod me down, it doesn't change the fact that it's true.This is why the GPL going to court is so truly terrifying--just look at how one-sided the moderation in this thread is. Moderation is not supposed to be about promoting things that agree with you. It's supposed to be about raising points in the discussion, particularly when it introduces a flaw in something.
If the GPL is to be improved, it must be considered in the context of an actual legal system and a standard of transactions that truly exists in the law. It cannot rely on what is intended to occur, or that Slashdotters want it interpreted in a certain way, despite any legal or logical support for it.
Given your lack of authorities, it's just particularly sad that a community will grant you credibility just for saying what people want to hear. Thank goodness we don't live in a democracy.
Where do you get any of your cracked-out interpretations? Certainly nowhere that qualifies you to give them.
Until you give notice of termination of the license, it is still in effect and you're still not bound by your legal promise not to sue for infringement. There is no precedent for what you describe. You wouldn't need breach of contract in the law at all if you could say "you didn't comply and therefore there never was a contract." The license doesn't have to say "we will tell you when we feel you are not living up to your end"--it's an implicit requirement in all contracts. Once entered into, they are binding until terminated, and the party doing the terminating can't just up and sue without giving notice that the license has been terminated.
Put another way, if you agree to pick no more than six of my apples a day for a month, and on the third day you pick seven, but no one says anything to you, and you keep picking six for the rest of the month, I can't sue you for 30 days of stolen apples. I can't even sue you for 27 days of stealing apples, even if I write into the contract that I will sue you for conversion, trespass, and larceny if you fail to perform fully. I can sue you for breach of contract, though.
What you mean to say is that the GPL imposes no restrictions on people for personal use. You are in full compliance with the GPL no matter what you do as a personal user. You can't ignore the GPL--it's the only thing that grants you legal access to the copyrighted material. You can ignore the restrictions that don't apply to you, which, as a personal user, is all of them.
You are rather imprecise and confused as to mechanics and theory of the law, but it's amusing to watch you try.
This is all part of why the goal has been to keep the GPL out of court. You're operating on the unfounded assumption that a noncompliant action is an automatic termination of a license--something that has no significant precedent in the law. Breaking the terms is grounds for termination, but the licensor must still do the actual termination. It's written with the hope that it will ride on autopilot, but that's not usually how it works.
Offer of the license is not conditional. It's right there on the website. Should the offeror wish to exercise some limit on making the offer, they have every right to do that, but that means individually entering into agreements. As soon as you break the terms you have revoked the license yourself, and may no longer distribute under it. Okay. I'll roll with it. Since you revoked the license, you're responsible for enforcing that revocation...on yourself. Crash and burn!
Somebody needs to get his terminology straight.