A must read for license law

[Russell McOrmond]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, daniel wallace wrote:

> This confusion gives rise to the myth that a copyright license is not a 
> contract.

  I've read what you wrote, and I have read and heard what Eben Moglen has
said on this topic.  IANAL, and I don't live in the United States, but
given the conflict in the viewpoints I will continue to believe what Eben
has indicated which is more convincing than what you wrote.

  While some copyright licenses get into conditions that would relate to
contract law, the GPL and licenses like those from the Creative Commons
seem to entirely be permissions and not contracts.

> In a few weeks or months everything released under the GPL --- ~ 80% of
> open source code will be in a state of quasi-public domain due to
> promissory estoppel.

  You did not make your case to me at all.

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 "Make it legal: don't litigate, use creative licensing" campaign.
 A modern answer to P2P: http://www.flora.ca/makelegal200403.shtml
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