On 12 Apr 2014, at 16:32, Ralph Corderoy <[email protected]> wrote:
Afternoon, Ralph >> Some kind of action for breach of contract, if you could prove (would >> that be in the interests of the community anyway?) that the GPL was a >> contract and not a licence. > > The FSF have said in the past they don't want it to be judged as a > contract? I'm not sure — possibly so? It would seem logical if that were the FSF's position, given that GNU GPL 2.0 section 5 — at least, my reading of it — hints at the intention to keep the document as a licence and not a contract. I am not sure it would be at all desirable for it to be interpreted as a contract, and, if it were to be construed as a contract, one would get into needing to prove that there was an "acceptance", that there was consideration, that the recipient intended to create a legal relationship and so on. It would also likely need to comply with various statutory regime around consumer protection and contractual fairness (which might pose no problem at all; it's not something I have thought about). Personally, I tend to treat GNU GPL 2.0 and 3.0 as conditional grants of licence, which would require a remedy to come from copyright law. > >> Some kind of false advertising, perhaps? > > If I buy a tome from my corner bookshop, thinking it to be printed by > the publisher, and with a pittance going to the author, only to realise > once home that it's been knocked up behind the counter without > permission of the copyright holder, what recourse do I have in England? Interesting question. You might be able to argue that there is a Sale of Goods Act issue here, in that the product is not of satisfactory quality but, if, to all intents and purposes, the only difference between the official copy and the unofficial copy was the lack of a licence to the publisher / printer, I have a feeling that this might be a difficult case to bring. I'm not aware of any authority on this point, but it is interesting. It feels slightly different to the situation in which someone buys a book bearing an autograph, and is told that the autograph is that of famous person x when, in fact, it has been applied by the store owner out the back — aside from advertising issues, I would suspect that this could be pursued criminally as fraud. However, the similarity which is coming to mind is that, in both cases, the purchaser derives value from the authenticity of the text / autograph, as much if not more so than the physical pages, binding etc. Best wishes Neil __________ Neil Brown [email protected] | http://neilzone.co.uk
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