For Approval: BSD License, PostgreSQL Variant
Chuck Swiger
chuck at codefab.com
Fri Oct 12 16:55:23 UTC 2007
On Oct 11, 2007, at 6:07 PM, dlw wrote:
> The GPL purports to bind "all third parties" to the terms of the
> GPL license. Unfortunately the Supreme Court of the United States
> in 2002 reaffirmed a fundamental principle of contract law
> prohibiting the parties to a contract from binding nonparties. See
> EEOC v. Waffle House, Inc./, 534 U.S. 279, 294 (2002) (“It goes
> without saying that a contract cannot bind a nonparty.”).
DLW, you show a remarkable facility for misinterpreting simple
situations and then finding citations which refute the strawman
position you've invented. To address this confusion simply, the GPL
does not purport to bind all third parties. In the initial clause,
it says "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification
are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act
of running the Program is not restricted...."
The GPL applies to people who copy, (re)distribute, and/or modify
(aka creative derivative works) something which is licensed under the
GPL. Someone who does none of these things is not bound by the GPL.
--
-Chuck
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