OSD compliant shareware

Chris D. Sloan cds at cs.hmc.edu
Mon Nov 19 02:14:19 UTC 2001


Sorry about that.  I accidently sent the message while it was incomplete...

On Sun, Nov 18, 2001 at 06:04:47PM -0800, Chris D. Sloan wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 08:59:21PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> > As I said, action can give consent, and a restaurant menu is just as much a
> > contract of adhesion (one-sided) as a Microsoft EULA.
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2001 at 06:45:54PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> > David Johnson scripsit:
> > 
> > > A menu at a restaurant clearly lays out the "terms" of the contract: a 
> > > particular price in exchange for a particular item. The fact that you pay fo 
> > > the item after you have used it does not make it very much different from any 
> > > other commercial transaction. 
> > 
> > Not my point.  The menu is a contract you're stuck with: your only recourse
> > is to go elsewhere if you don't like the terms.
> 
> I'm not sure I under stand your point.  In a restaurant, I go in and
> order something.

What I meant to say is that when I order food, I'm specifically asking
the other party for some goods and services, and that's where I assume
that the legal contract is, not in the menu itself which is just their
published offer to potential customers.

With most commercial software, I don't deal with the author, but I pay
a third party for the shrink wrapped box (presumably a legal contract
between myself and the store).  Then when I open it, and there is an
additional license which I'm expected to accept before I can use the
thing which I already paid for.  (In some cases, by the time you have
obtained access to the license, you have already performed the action
which it claims means you agree to the license.)  This is very
different from the restaurant analogy.

	Chris

-- 
Chris Sloan
cds at cs.hmc.edu
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