Re: Licensing problem in winstaller
Bob <bob_j_hayes-/[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.network.freenet.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Matthew Toseland <toad@...> writes: > Under UK law almost any time you copy a file is a copyright infringement > unless you have explicit permission or are covered by one of the > incredibly narrow exceptions. There is no real "fair use", in the > american sense. I might argue that in the UK it is necessary to accept > the GPL in order to use GPL'd software. Hmm, well if that's true then I suppose it has to stay in some form. I thought that use was implicitly granted under the GPL's reversion to copyright, and making one backup copy is IIRC a right that can't be taken away by a EULA after the 'point of sale' on both sides of the pond (despite attempts to deny it through copy protection.) The only possible way I can see around it is to explicitly grant anyone the right to use and distribute the software as-is, as a copyright license. Then layer the optional GPL license rights on top of that if they agree to them. This sort of dual licensing isn't very elegant though. > These issues are complex precisely because there are cross country issues... > Anyhow, what do you propose we do about it? I don't want to have to get > people to agree to the GPL when they run the distribution servlet... Fair enough, it seems to be less straightforward than I thought. Perhaps just change the dialog text to note that whether agreeing is required only to use the software may depend on their local laws, hence it may be non-binding in that case. Clickthroughs have no real legal meaning anyway. The maxNodeConnections=60 winstaller bug is probably more important :) Bob _______________________________________________ chat mailing list [email protected] Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe