[License-review] Sublicensing

[Pamela Chestek]

On 9/11/2014 12:26 PM, John Cowan wrote:
> That seems right, but the usual presumption by open-source licensors
> (whether consciously or not) is that they are all conditions and binding
> on the whole world. 
I agree, but wonder whether a court would agree. Before writing my email
I looked a some of the licenses to see how the condition/covenant
distinction would divide the obligations. I found the Apache v2
interesting, because it says "Subject to the terms and conditions of
this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You ..." So one can
argue that this means everything in the license is expressly a
condition. I would also certainly argue that the licenses are crafted
specifically to protect the ecosystem and therefore everything in the
license is a condition designed to achieve that goal. But I don't know
whether a court would agree.

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
PO Box 2492
Raleigh, NC 27602
919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal.com
www.chesteklegal.com
PGP key 246A430A