On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 04:13:01PM +1000, Bruce Bahamut Andrews wrote: > "The EULA is not a law, Its a contract. And you cant broken a contract you > have not sign. No one on Freecraft or BNETD have sign that EULA. "
Hmm, perhaps I can send this discussion in a better direction by elaborating on this. I am not a lawyer, but this is my amatuer understand on how these things work: A EULA is not a contract, it is a license. A contract you sign and cannot break, and it can pretty much stipulate your behavior on anything that does not infringe on the law and your rights under it. A contract can cause you to pay people, it can cause you not pay other people, it can cause you live in a certain place or use a certain phone. A contract is an agreement which is enforcable by law. A license on the other hand, is simply a statement of rights as pertaining to copyright law. When someone creates something they have the rights to make and distribute copies (ie copyright) unless they specifically allow someone else to do it as well. If you buy a book from the book store, you see that after the copyright notice it says "All rights reserved." This means that the author of the book reserves all of the rights to make copies of and distribute that book, within the terms of the Fair Use Act. However, the copyright for most software comes with a license that lets the users copy and distribute the software under a certain set of conditions. For example, the GNU Public License (GPL) allows users the right to copy and distribute modified versions of the program, as long as the source code of those changes is distributed as well. Also, most Microsoft license agreements stipulate that you are not allowed to copy or make modifications to or distribute versions of their software at all. However, in both of these cases, the original author holds the copyright (read: the right to copy) and you are only licensed this right under a specific set of terms. -- Jorge "Vino" Rodriguez _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
