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Re: Licensing question about the BSD


From: Rui Miguel Seabra
Subject: Re: Licensing question about the BSD
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 11:17:24 +0100

On Tue, 2005-08-09 at 10:31 +0200, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> Rui Miguel Seabra wrote: 
> [...]
> > There's no contract from the beginning. 
> 
> Drop a note to Edwards of debian-legal and ask for a copy of his "Will 
> the Real GNU GPL Please Stand Up?" 

Stop distorting intentionally everything people write.

> Uhmm. Oh wait, I suspect you're in Europe. Go ask Welte's lawyer(s) 
> http://www.ifross.de and/or http://www.jbb.de) why the GPL is a 
> contract in the EU civil law countries too.

Many lawyers treat licenses as contracts. And in many cases perhaps they
are right: the typical proprietary license _further_inhibits_ the rights
a software user can perform, and as such it has to be contractual.

However, the GNU GPL _increases_ rights, without interfering with the
ones that already do exist.

If you get a copy, you can run the software for any purpose.
But to distribute copies:
   a) you have to have the right
   b) copyright forbids that right to others than the copyright holder
   c) the GNU GPL is an unilateral grant of copying rights under
      certain conditions
   d) AND: nothing else grants you those rights.

Oh, and please stop creating intentional confusion with that "first
sale" thing. If you make a copy, and keep your own copy, that's not
"first sale".

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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