Strange clauses in the Twidroid license

[Kevin T. Neely]

This isn't a loophole in the GPL because twidroid is not licensed under the GPL. And, apparently, not licensed under any open source license.
K
--
Mobile on my Nokia N900
----- Original message -----
> Hi, I'm new to this list, so I'm not sure that this is the right place
> for this question, but here we go:
> 
> I read the license agreement for Twidroid, a proprietary Twitter
> client for Android: http://twidroid.com/terms/
> 
> Perhaps I'm reading too much into the license text, but to me it
> sounds like they may be infringing a copyleft license and are trying
> to write themselves out of it. Quoting the suspicious parts of the
> license:
> 
> "Under no circumstances shall source code of Twidroid be made
> available to you by tomatic."
> 
> Why would they mention this in the license?
> 
> "If Twidroid is, or in tomatic’s opinion is likely to become, the
> subject of a claim of infringement, tomatic shall have the right,
> without obligation and at its sole discretion, to: a) procure for you
> the right to continue to use Twidroid; b) replace or modify Twidroid
> in such a way as to make the modified version of Twidroid
> non-infringing; or c) terminate this License Agreement, /../"
> 
> This sounds like they have a plan for what to do if they are accused
> of GPL violation. Does anyone have any idea of what other reason they
> may have to include such as clause?
> 
> Regardless of the reason behind the clause, could such a clause be
> used to avoid the copyleft? As soon as the company is accused of
> violating the GPL, they revoke the user's right to use the software.
> Since the user is no longer allowed to use the software, they no
> longer have the right to get the source code. Is this a possible
> loophole in the GPL?
> 
> Martin
> 
> -- 
> martin at librador.com
> http://www.librador.com
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