"Daniel C. Sobral" wrote:
> Peter Wemm wrote:
> >
> > One key thing to keep in mind is that copyrights apply automatically
> > regardless of age, contracts etc. You have no right to copy a copyrighted
> > work unless the right to do so is given to you (or you have statutory
> > rights such as making backups etc). In this case, you don't have the right
> > to redistribute it except those granted by the license with it's
> > conditions. If you don't accept the license or cannot because you're under
> > the age of being able to enter into a contract or whatever, then you can't
> > redistribute it *period*. You can download it (they are distributing it,
> > not you), and do pretty much whatever you like with it once they've given
> > it to you, but you can't give it to anyone else. This means that if you
> > were under 18 etc, you probably could use it for commercial purposes if you
> > believed the license didn't apply. (And Lucent/whoever *do* own the
> > copyright on the additional Eclipse stuff).
>
> So... basically... you can't redistribute GPL code unless law permits
> you to enter contracts? How funny... :-)
It depends on whether you consider a redistribution license a contract or
not. If it says somthing to the effect of "in order to redistribute this,
these are the conditions you must follow", that's not necessarily a
contract. You don't have any obligations, unless you want the right to
distribute it.
However, if it's a "click here to accept" in order to download something,
then thats closer to a contract as it's getting you to accept obligations
regardless of whether you distribute it or not. This covers things like
"no commercial use" and so on. You can generally only impose restrictions
on *usage* via some sort of contract.
The GPL is very much the former. You can pretty much do whatever you damn
well please with it and have absolutely no obligations. But to get the
right to distribute the copyrighted code (or derivatives), then the license
spells out the conditions under which you can distribute it. The BSD
license is similar - you don't have any obligations unless you want to
distribute it.
Cheers,
-Peter
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