For Approval: GPLv3

[Chris Travers]

IANAL, and try to avoid correcting them too often but....

On 8/31/07, Alexander Terekhov <alexander.terekhov at gmail.com> wrote:


>
> [quoting Eben Moglen] They're not
> very old minds, because if in each of their legal systems they went
> to their old legal dictionaries and looked at what the word license
> means, or if they got real Roman about it and went and looked in the
> Institutes of Justinian to find out what license means, they would
> discover that a license is a unilateral permission, not an
> obligation, and so what happens is that these minds that say these
> thing, they're stuck in a little space, a thousand years after
> Justinian and before the Second World War.


If this obligation didn't exist, it would make no sense to argue for
specific performance in a GPL violation lawsuit because there wouldn't be
any obligations placed on the person excersizing rights granted in the
license.  If there is never an obligation, you can't go later and say "you
didn't uphold your end of the bargain.  Please do so now by releasing your
source under the GPL."

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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