Quoting Paolo Falcone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): [long dictionary quotation snipped]
Paolo, thank you for your comments. > In our own laws, a license can be considered as a a contract (Civil Code > article 1305) or a quasi-contract (Civil Code articles 2164-2175). > In the case of the GPL, the law considers the parties to have executed a > contract (as a quasi-contract, as a deliberate formal agreement is > usually not necessary, though such consent has been supplied by fiction > of law). The GNU GPL does not purport to be a contract, but rather a grant of non-default rights by the copyright holder under copyright law. If you look at the copyright statute, in all countries where I've examined such, you'll find that the default rights you receive if I simply hand you an instance of my codebase _without_ an explicit licence, the rights reserved to me by default include redistribution and the creation of derivative works. Thus, that would be classified as a proprietary codebase. When using the GNU GPL, the copyright holder voluntarily grants these additional rights (subject to some conditions), that would otherwise have been reserved. Some other open-source licences specifically _do_ purport to be contracts. This is a frequent area of confusion. -- Cheers, Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done. Rick Moen [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
