Rahul Dhesi wrote: > > Alexander Terekhov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is at it again: > > [ 8 + 39 lines of quoted content ] > [ 2 meaningless lines of original content ]
Hey Rahul, but the most charming piece regarding GNUtian legal system from you is this: http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/msg/ca73c9fd532841b5 ----- Appended below is a copy of what I posted previously. (Sometimes discussions stray so far nobody remembers what the original question was :-) I am essentially making the claim that by placing software under the GNU license, you are not losing any rights over it. You are granting others certain rights. Corollaries: - You can violate the GNU license for your software without violating copyright law. Why? Because you cannot unilaterally give up your rights. So you are not bound by the GNU license even though you have placed your software under it. - You can later revoke the rights that you granted to others when you placed the software under the GNU license. Why? Because you did not grant any rights to any specific person. What would be the grounds of a lawsuit? That you violated a contract? There was none. Fraud? Maybe. Some sort of general tort for damages? Perhaps. Even if a court rules that you can't revoke your decision, that ruling will likely only be given to protect a specific defendant who suffered actual damages as a consequence of your revoking your decision. I doubt very much that a court will rule that you can't revoke your decision at all, only that you must compensate *this* specific defendant with *proven* damages, or let him keep using your software. I don't know of any enabling legislation that allows a person to place software under the GNU license and be unable to revoke this decision later. I am not claiming that my claim is provably correct, only that it's a claim! Sometimes such claims are proven wrong, not because they were wrong when they were made, but because judges make new law all the time. Free software lies near the periphery of tried and trusted legal precedents. Who knows what the next judge will decide? Most judges who use computers at home use Macintoshes. Need I say more? ----- regards, alexander. _______________________________________________ Gnu-misc-discuss mailing list Gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss