Licensing problem in winstaller

Bob <bob_j_hayes-/[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.network.freenet.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
The winstaller says that you *have* to agree to the GNU GPL to install / use
Freenet; however this is not true :

"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
 signed it.  However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
 distribute the Program or its derivative works.  These actions are
 prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.  Therefore, by
 modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
 Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
 all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
 the Program or works based on it."

i.e. _use_ is fine without accepting the GPL, only distribution and modification
are not allowed. This is a very common problem with win32 Free software, people
want something to use for the installshield license.txt and assume the GPL is
basically a EULA like any other, but it's not. An example of how it should be
done is the Zinf audio player, which has a "we're licensed under the GPL, here
it is" message and a "Cool!" button instead of I Agree ;^)

Maybe someone was thinking of the distribution servlet, which would infringe if
they didn't agree, but that has to be run manually as a deliberate
'distribution' action.

Relevant discussion :
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41387&cid=4380262

Bob


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