[License-review] Request for Approval of Universal Permissive License (UPL)

[John Cowan]

Lawrence Rosen scripsit:

> [<LER>] I don't understand Charlie's motivation either. Perhaps he didn't
> realize that Alice has a Help-About that explains exactly where to find all
> of Bob's source code without prying into her proprietary stuff.

As I say, he lives where there is no Internet; he can only get access to
Bob's code in Alice's expression of it.

> Furthermore,
> Charlie's lawyer probably didn't tell him that by doing so he is violating
> the DMCA and trade secret laws, and probably is in breach of the proprietary
> contract he negotiated with Alice.

<rant>The DMCA is outrageous overreach.  It has now, it seems, been held
reverse engineering to spend two weeks examining a competitor's product
to determine what it does (not how it does it).  See Bowers v. Baystate,
320 F.3d 1317 (2003).
Indeed, we seem to be only one Supreme Court decision away from the notion
that a seller can not only set the terms of a contract of adhesion
after the sale is complete, but need not disclose them, or even devise
them, until it's time to go to court.</rant>


> 4) Alice sues Charlie for infringement of parts of her copyrighted software.
> 
> [<LER>] I'm not sure if infringement is the proper cause of action, but she
> surely has some reason to complain. Charlie's a jerk!

But is he within his rights, DCMA and shrink-wrap license aside?

> 5) Charlie's defense is that Alice's compiled code is just Bob's source code
> in a different medium, and he relies on Bob's license.
> 
> [<LER>] Go to hell, Charlie. Go to SourceForge like Alice did and just as
> Alice's Help-About said you could.

#firstworldproblems


-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Today an interactive brochure website, tomorrow a global content
management system that leverages collective synergy to drive "outside of
the box" thinking and formulate key objectives into a win-win game plan
with a quality-driven approach that focuses on empowering key players
to drive-up their core competencies and increase expectations with an
all-around initiative to drive up the bottom-line. --Alex Papadimoulis