ATT SOURCE CODE AGREEMENT Version 1.2C

[Mark Wells]

On Thu, 9 Sep 1999, Forrest J. Cavalier III wrote:

> >        2. In the event that any provision of this Agreement is deemed
> >           illegal or unenforceable, AT&T may, but is not obligated to, post
> >           on the Website a new version of this Agreement which, in AT&T's
> >           opinion, reasonably preserves the intent of this Agreement.
> 
> I think that loophole is way too large.  "Deemed illegal or unenforceable" by 
> whom?  Also, this clause appears worse than the original Apple public license 
> in terms of being able to revoke rights to use software already licensed.

I think it's clear that only a court can deem something in a contract
"illegal or unenforceable".  It would be nice for them to say that up
front, though.

> BTW, this doesn't sound like a license cooked up by lawyers.....And
> the definitions of Source Code, Patches, and Capsule are kind of
> odd, so it doesn't sound like it was cooked up by programmers....

That's what I see as the major problem with this license: it's unreadable.
Nobody has to read through the X license more than twice to figure out
what they're allowed to do with the software.  The OSD says that the
source code has to be distributed in a non-obfuscated form, but what about
the license?  Shouldn't it be non-obfuscated also?