Re: [DUG] Open source licences

[Grant Brown]

"you are saying that you abide by piracy" I never said that so dont trying putting words in my mouth. "Nothing is free unless you have a contract stating its free. Thats the default interpretation." Rubbish Grant Leigh Wanstead wrote: Hi Kyley, I am monitoring this post too. ;-) I agreed all you said. But go to the court is very very dear for both party. Regards Leigh http://www.salenz.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Kyley Harris Sent: Wednesday, 7 December 2005 4:51 p.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] Open source licences Yes, you are saying that you abide by piracy as being ok if not caught? Just because I release something for free to the public, doesn't mean I am allowing you to take it for the purpose of making a profit. Patenting an idea does not mean that you intend to charge for it. It means that you have decided on the correct path for your IT property to follow. The whole point of the license is to create large quanities of quality free software alternatives, not to allow people who cant do it themselves profit from the idea, by wrapping and selling to people who didn't know better. It is no different than finding a cure for cancer, and releasing the information as long as you don't charge for the cure. Its called helping mankind. If you tried to make a profit you'd be in court real fast. There are plenty of GPL cases in court who win. just follow the newspapers to see them. I would love to see someone recompile Linux with a new branding and call it DamnGood OS and sell it for $100 a copy. Does anyone seriously think Linus wouldn't see you in court? By the way. All newspapers do have copyrights. Infact all written word is copyright by default, and if you took that text from a newspaper and reprinted it within the legal boundaries of plagurism you'd be screwed there too. Being Free makes is worthless? then why would you want to use it. Its not free. It has a license which has conditions. Those conditions set a non-monetary worth on the work. Not everything is valued by dollars. Think of it like a priceless painting; not being able to price it does not make it worthless. You also cant make copies and sell it without permission either. As far as being unaware....... come on. If you find $100 bucks on the road you are legally obliged to hand it into the cops. I bet you don't, but you are breaking a law. Common Sense law. Nothing is free unless you have a contract stating its free. Thats the default interpretation. On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:55:35 +1300, Grant Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi to all, I have kept an eye on this thread with some interest, and whilst I am not a lawyer I don't believe that open source licenses of any nature would stand up in court. Nor do I think much of click through license agreements. You need a written and signed contract not an action to form the basis of an agreement. After the agreement has been enacted by way of signing by all parties then yes actions matter but not before. This certainly applies to construction contracts, however OS's may be different. Being open source the code in question by default is placed in a public forum, which I would have thought negates the license. If that were not the case then every newspaper in the world would attract a license agreement. Being open source (ie free) then the code has no value so there can be no loss by the owner, hence no claim for loss. The other interesting point is that if you are going to place code in open source, then why place any kind of agreement on it at all, kind of defeats the purpose. Also where does the agreement start, anyone could just say the code was given to them and did not download it from the owners site and hence not agreed to any sort of license. Has any open source license ever been tested in court, it would be interesting to read the transcript. As I said before I'm not a lawyer, but I think one would be very hard pressed to run a case based upon open source code and some sort of perceived loss due to a end user agreement. My personal view is that if something is provided as open source then its open source, not open source with a huge "BUT" attached. -- Kyley Harris +64-21-671821 _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list Delphi@ns3.123.co.nz http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list Delphi@ns3.123.co.nz http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi -- Regards, Grant Brown Product Development Manager Phone : 02 4229 1185 Mobile : 0412 926 995 Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : www.sitedoc.com.au SiteDoc - Easy to Use - Powerful Results

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