"Violation"

j.Maxwell Legg income at ihug.co.nz
Fri Mar 24 05:30:51 UTC 2000



Mark Wells wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, W. Yip wrote:
>
> > A license is only permissive. The failure to follow the license terms
> > amounts to acting beyond what is permitted. Invariably in software this act
> > would infringe copyright, because such an act would presumably come under
> > those exclusive rights guaranteed by copyright. Therefore, 'violation of
> > license terms' is not a proper phrase, since the effect is copyright
> > infringement.
>
> Yes, a license grants certain copyright privileges to the licensee.  It
> also imposes conditions and constraints on those privileges.  If you
> continue to exercise the copyright privileges without following the
> conditions, you are infringing the copyright.
>
> But the _reason_ you are infringing the copyright is that you are
> violating the conditions placed on the grant of copyright privileges.
> The general legal term is 'copyright infringement', but it's more useful
> and descriptive to call it a violation of the license.

W.Yip was referring specifically to alterations to a an old bare license that had no subject matter and was only a set of terms.

What say you if student (A) evolves by greater or lesser  than 10% the terms of the said license so that it may be applied to a
particular subject and then licensor (B) uses that license to grant copyright privileges in his code. Note that this set of
terms included one which attempted to copyright the exact construction of the whole license but it failed because fair use
allows at least for error correction and alterations based on the cultural experience afforded by time.

My case in point is the WinGrid Free Public License which is based on the Aladdin Free Public License. The WFPL invites anyone
to point out where its reformatting, error corrections and evolutionary dual licensing and viral enhancements to the AFPL have
caused a violation or an infringement.

http://ingrid.netpedia.net/wingrid_html/wingrid_free_public_license.htm






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