Eiffel Forum License

[David Johnson]

On Tue, 02 May 2000, Mark Wells wrote:

> If I understand these correctly, the right you have is the right to use
> it.  Any other rights (redistribution, modification, public performance,
> etc.) have to be granted by the author or other owner of the copyright.

You have the same rights as you would with a book or CD. You may make
archival copies. You may give (and even sell) your copy (along with all
archival copies) to a friend. You may take it apart. And some other
stuff.

> 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).

-- 
David Johnson...
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