http://echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/97564258-437D-4FFD-A54D-2766DE255CCA/0/DG2ENHRHAND102007.pdf
http://www.ilaw.com.au/public/licencearticle.html , in particular: Estoppel There may be scope to argue that a licensor is precluded from changing the licence conditions on software if he or she misled the licensee into relying on the continuance of the existing terms in the knowledge that the licensee would be detrimentally affected by that reliance if the terms were changed. The argument would be based on a legal doctrine called estoppel, which can prohibit you from exercising your legal rights - in this case, the right to change the licence conditions - if you have allowed someone else to rely on the fact that you wouldn't exercise those rights. In light of the rhetoric that is often bandied about to the effect of "Once GPL, always GPL", circumstances could well exist in which this argument would be quite persuasive. The question is, can estoppel restrict a licensor from changing their licence conditions to the user community as a whole, or only one particular licensee? Probably only the latter, since it is generally impossible to demonstrate reliance, which is one of the elements of estoppel, except on a case-by-case basis. 59 This reduces the usefulness of the estoppel argument to combat the withdrawal of open source licensing of a package that is in widespread use. At best, one open source licensee's victory will cause the licensor to reconsider enforcing the new license terms against other former licensees. Another limitation of the estoppel argument is that a court would not necessarily compensate a licensee who had been misled into relying on the continuity of an open source licence by requiring the licensor to reinstate that license; it would be equally open for the court simply to order the licensor to pay damages. Those damages might be negligible unless the licensee has significant business interests riding on the use of the package. ... Just to be clear, I have no issue with Erland choosing to charge people for his work going forward - that is his inalienable right. However, nobody SHOULD provide anything - under licence or under contract - for free or for a price - and then disable it or disable it until a fee is paid... UNLESS it was spelled out at the time of supply (i.e. as a Licence/contract term) that this could or would happen. I'm not saying anyone should or even could sue anyone - that's just silly. I was talking about the general case of retrospective modification of contract or license terms which is normally something only Governments can do with impunity... !! -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal... Touch(wired/W7)+Teddy Pardo PSU - Audiolense 3.3/2.0+INGUZ DRC - MF M1 DAC - Linn 5103 - full Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Pekin Tuner, Townsend Supertweeters,VdH Toslink,Kimber 8TC Speaker & Chord Signature Plus Interconnect cables Stax4070+SRM7/II phones Kitchen Boom, Outdoors: SB Radio, Harmony One remote for everything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=90975 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
