Re: Where is the qmail Licence?

I did not mean djb could abandon his copyright. I meant that his actions
or inactions define his licence, which is in essence a contract between
the parties. 

IMHO he would need an explicit statement to allow him to be lax in
respect to certain parties without his inaction being intepreted as a
definition of the contract. He has no such statement (indeed no licence
that I can see). Even if he had such a statement IFAIK it would not be
enforacble in an English court. Aha you say, it would be a US court. Not
so, IMHO the contract needs to rule on jurisdiction or else I get to
choose where I get to defend myself. 

The bottom line is that an undefined licence is not really enforcable. I
reckon there isn't a single person on this board who wants to upset djb
over this issue by breaking his intended 'licence'. But without a clear
definition of what that licence is, he can't really complain if someone
just shrugs and then interprets it in the 'wrong' way.
- Andy

Charles Cazabon wrote:
> 
> Andy Jackman <[email protected]> wrote: [snip mostly valid points]
> > More importantly, I understand that if he fails to take action against
> > people to appear to have violated his licence (like plisk) then he is in
> > fact showing that their actions are not illegal and are in fact a valid
> > interpretation of the licence.
> 
> That is not a valid assumption; copyright is not abandoned in this way as
> trademarks are.  djb would have to make an explicit statement to grant you any
> rights that the law does not already give you.
> 
> Charles
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Charles Cazabon                        <[email protected]>
> GPL'ed software available at:     http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------