Eiffel Forum License

[Mark Wells]

On Tue, 2 May 2000, David Johnson wrote:

> > The logical conclusion of this is that by buying the software you
> > have agreed to any contract that may happen to be in the package.  I
> > can't imagine a court upholding this.
> 
> The same applies to Open Source software as well. If you aquire a
> shrinkwrapped Redhat or an unseen Cheapbytes CD, you will have
> purchased a bunch of software without happening to see any OSS licenses
> covering them. There was a recent flap over just this issue. It quickly
> blew over though, since all of the current OSS licenses do not depend
> upon agreements or contracts. They do not attempt to remove any rights
> you currently possess under copyright (well, almost - a few skirt the
> border).

That's the difference.  You don't _have_ to accept an open-source license
to exercise your rights under copyright law: using the software, making
backup copies, reverse-engineering (though this is rather pointless), etc.
You can buy a Red Hat CD, read the GPL, decide not to follow it, and go on
using the software, because copyright law says you don't need a license to
use a copy that you own.

You _do_, however, have to accept the GPL to use any of the copyright
privileges it grants, such as redistribution.

Therefore, it is not the act of buying the copy that indicates acceptance
of some unknown contract inside the package, but the act of using the
rights that the contract specifically grants.  This is much more
defensible.  The author could put a clause in the license that says that
if you redistribute the software you must pay him $1,000, but since you
can never assume a right to redistribute copyrighted material you must at
least _read_ the contract before doing the things that place you under its
obligation.