On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 14:56:54 +0200 Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: > > OK, but both parties have to agree to exclude it: so this license > > smells more like a common-law-contract, rather than a unilateral > > grant. The licensee has to give up the possibility to have the > > Convention applied, in order to obtain the rights attached to this > > `license'. > > You're right. The license is intended to be a common-law > contract. Hence the phrases about assent. So the idea is that the > licensee has agreed to everything in the license.
Being a common-law-contract is troublesome, for the licensee could result in having given up a freedom that he/she had before accepting the contract. Even if the triggering clause is subtle and we don't notice the issue. With a unilateral license grant, we are guaranteed that no pre-existing right can disappear upon the act of copying, distributing or modifying and distributing... > > But I'm not sure if giving up the benefits of this convention > is a reason to make the license non-free. As I said, if the Convention we are talking about is really intended to apply only to matter (and not to information), the licensee probably looses no rights in accepting to exclude its application... > When accepting the terms > of the GPL, I also must give up certain rights about warranties that > I normally expect to have. I didn't see that way: I saw the disclaimer of warranty as a declaration (valid even if I don't accept the license and I merely use the piece of software without copying, distributing or modifying it). If the law says the warranty *may* be disclaimed and the software has this disclaimer attached, I'm warned that there is no warranty: I loose no right in accepting the license, as I didn't have any such right in the first place. > > Sorry about the cc. Don't worry! :) That was no real problem (only a bit of surprise in seeing a debian-legal message pop up in my inbox, rather than being automatically moved to the appropriate folder...). -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. ...................................................................... Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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