Combining GPL and non-GPL code

[John Cowan]

Walter van Holst scripsit:

> As long as the GPL requires the end-user to surrender
> its rights to compensation for damages caused by the software and not
> to expect any warranty or guarantee for the software to actually do
> something useful, it cannot be a unilateral 'licence'. 

Well, I see this through a common-law prism, of course, but it seems
to me that the GPL is simply telling you that the licensor is not
giving you certain rights.  It also notifies you that this may be
overridden by operation of law: your legal system may give you
rights (warrantability and fitness, e.g.) that cannot be disclaimed
in this way.  It does not require you to surrender anything you had
in the first place, and as such remains unilateral.

> At least in the Netherlands and I daresay the rest of continental
> Europe this theory does not apply.

Fair enough.

-- 
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at a block of wood make there an image of a cow,
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