On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 07:33:51PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > >>>>> "Jamie" == Jamie Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Jamie> "Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or > Jamie> any work based on the Program), you indicate your > Jamie> acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and > Jamie> conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the > Jamie> Program or works based on it." > > Note that this is NOT a contract; you have no proof that the violator > accepted it.
You don't have to sign something to make a legally binding agreement. As an extreme, there was a case here in the UK a few years ago in which three men made a purely verbal agreement to share lottery winnings if ever one of them won. One of them did win, and a judge made him pay up, simply because he admitted to having agreed. AIUI, the stance taken in the GPL is that because you can only legally distribute the work by accepting the GPL, you must have accepted it if you distribute the work. > The GPL itself recognizes this issue, in the very same > clause you quote. I think all you can do is punish the violator for > unlicensed distribution, not enforce the GPL on the violator's code. That's a good start though. If a contributor sues you for incorporating his proprietary work, you can countersue for violating the GPL, and so hopefully settle out of court. > In any case, it is presumably legal to post a patch "for discussion > only" under the fair use exclusion, which would require no license. True. Seems like license metadata might be a nice thing to have. See my response to Ketil. One would hope it would be unnecessary, but it might make Darcs more appealing to some of the more zealous or high profile projects (it might've saved some trouble if the exact license for every patch in Linux was known...). -- Jamie Webb _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.abridgegame.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
