For Approval: GPLv3

[Raj Mathur]

On Saturday 01 September 2007 00:42, Chris Travers wrote:
> [snip]
> Footnote 77 of the Rationale Document for the Second Draft explains
> the change:
> "     We received a number of forceful objections to the title of
> section 9 of Draft1, princi-
> pally from lawyers. This surprised us, since our section titles were
> not intended to have
> legal significance, and, moreover, the content of section 9 was
> essentially unchanged from
> section 5 of GPLv2. We have changed the title of section 9 to one
> that summarizes the
> first sentence of the section.
>    Section 9 means what it says: mere receipt or execution of code
> neither requires nor
> signifies contractual acceptance under the GPL. Speaking more
> broadly, we have inten-
> tionally structured our license as a unilateral grant of copyright
> permissions, the basic
> operation of which exists outside of any law of contract. Whether and
> when a contractual
> relationship is formed between licensor and licensee under local law
> do not necessarily
> matter to the working of the license."
>
> IANAL, but my reading of this means that it creates an adherence
> contract but that the point when this occurs is not important to
> GPL3.

All it seems to say is that the licensor and licensee may choose to 
enter into a contractual relationship outside of the rights granted by 
GPLv3, which relationship is independent of the GPLv3.  The 
phrase "Whether and when" clearly indicates that there is no implicit 
or explicit contract created as a consequence of the GPLv3 itself.

Regards,

-- Raju
-- 
Raj Mathur                raju at kandalaya.org      http://kandalaya.org/
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