A must read for license law

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

I agree with John, but, if there is a connection, it is not readily
apparent. Would you explain your point further?

 There may be a conceptually interesting question regarding whether a
particular "public" license is a restriction on liberty or a grant of
permission to do a thing that otherwise would be unlawful to do, but none of
that seems particularly relevant to open source software licensing.  The use
of the term or phrase "general public license" or "public license" even may
raise the question in what sense are those licenses public licenses rather
than private agreements, but I doubt that any OSI-approved open source
license using the phrase "public license" conveys a sense that the license
presents the concern raised by the quoted 1953 law review article about
government licensing schemes.

Rod


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Cowan" <cowan at ccil.org>
To: "daniel wallace" <danw6144 at insightbb.com>
Cc: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 8:10 PM
Subject: Re: A must read for license law


: daniel wallace scripsit:
:
: > The following link is the best work on license
: > law that I have ever found:
: >
: > http://www.lawyerdude.8k.com/5943.html
: >
: > Disaster lurks for those who do not comprehend
: > the difference between a *malefaction* and a
: > *benefaction* in copyright license law.
:
: I do not believe (IANAL, TINLA) that the "public licenses" Lawyerdude
: refers to have anything to do with the public licenses of the open
: source world.  He seems to be talking about the license to practice
: law which he no longer has.
:
: -- 
: Values of beeta will give rise to dom!          John Cowan
: (5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
: to rename '.' or '..' entries; see              jcowan at reutershealth.com
: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)
: --
: license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3

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