(Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit Overturns Jacobsen v. Katzer - Ruling as text)
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=2008081313212422&title=I%27m%20confused...&type=article&order=DESC&hideanonymous=0&pid=718795#c718819 -------- I'm confused... Authored by: PJ on Thursday, August 14 2008 @ 12:24 PM EDT You are correct to be ccnfused, in that licenses are, in law books, often put in the chapter on contracts. If you read the article I wrote about the GPL being a license, not a contract, linked in the article, you'll find a footnote about that topic. And I'll tell you a story. When I was working on one of the committees in the GPLv3 revision process, I mentioned in passing that the GPL is a license, not a contract, and that there are enemies of the GPL trying to make it a contract instead, so they could force policing infringement into state courts. There were a number of lawyers on the committee. They laughed. They had never heard of such a thing, and to a man/woman (other than the FSF folks) they thought I was wrong ("just a paralegal", I am guessing was the internal thinking). They literally mocked such a concept, and when I pointed out that it was Eben Moglen that said so, they fell into a stunned silence, and then repeated their objections. It's a very creative thing the GPL does. And because it's so contrary to what lawyers are used to, they could not see it as even being conceivable. I am sure they do now, of course, after this ruling. So you are not the only one confused. -------- ROFL. regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
