Re: Proposal for P2P disclaimer text

"Petter E. Stokke" <[email protected]> Fri, 19 Mar 2004 17:12:45 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.comp.kde.policies
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Thursday 18 March 2004 19:10, Scott Wheeler wrote:
> On Thursday 18 March 2004 16:44, Martin K=F6bele wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > after I just released Apollon 0.9.3 I asked a debian-developer to
> > update the repository. And I just had to learn that the proposed
> > suggestions (by Petter Stockke and Andreas Pour) violate the GPL.
> >
> > GPL =A70:  "[...]The act of running the Program is not
> > restricted,[...]".
> >
> >
> > So we can't restrict, we could warn though.
>
> Actually it's not an additional restriction -- it essentially says "You
> aren't allowed to break the law with this" -- which is stating something
> that is true whether you state it or not...

No, it isn't. If you agreed to a contract (or, in this case, a software=20
license) stating that you're not allowed to break the law, the party with=20
which the contract was made would have a legal grievance with you if you=20
did break the law, in addition to the State. Criminal law is one thing,=20
this would be quite another.

=2D-=20
Petter E. Stokke <[email protected]> http://www.gibreel.net/
PGP key: http://www.gibreel.net/key.asc
=46ingerprint: 4FF3 12BD 692A 0FFF 984F  78DA 4776 81FB 1906 3A9F