Hi Cyril, On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 03:16:10AM +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote: > Thank you for your input (and I'm certainly no lawyer at all, nor highly > experienced in that domain). Here's the relevant quote from Jörg's > REJECTED mail (there were other problems as well):
I should emphasize that I am not a lawyer either and can't be considered as giving legal advice. That said, I have made sure to become quite well-informed in copyright matters despite being a layman. > > Next point: > > ---+++ > > This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it. > > The software provided hereunder is on an "as is" basis, and the author > > has no obligation to provide maintenance, support, updates, > > enhancements, or modifications. > > ---+++ > > > > While we all know they mean the right thing - its still not free. You > > arent allowed to use it, and in (C) stuff that means you simply arent > > allowed to use it, as by default everything not granted is just not > > there... Joerg is approximately right here, but only approximately. Copyright law does requires permission to violate the exclusive rights of the copyright holder, and any permission not granted within that is indeed just not there, but the right to use a legally obtained program is not one of those exclusive rights. In addition to the example I gave in my previous mail of the GPLv2 not granting explicit use rights, I just read the Clarified Artistic License already in such Debian packages as ncftp, and beyond an indirect and non-binding remark of author intention in the preamble it doesn't explicitly grant use rights either. Likewise with the W3C Software Notice and License linked from http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ - it lists use as one of the conditions for the license to trigger, but its permission clause also doesn't grant permission to use it. Such permission is not needed. The Software Freedom Law Center's Legal Issues Primer for Free Software Projects does not mention use when they list the exclusive rights governed by copyright, and Wikipedia's "Software license" article (admittedly less reliable than the other sources I've listed) also asserts that mere end users are allowed to use an open-source program even if they do not accept the license, as long as they don't infringe any of the exclusive copyright rights. I will discuss with Joerg and see if he agrees with the reasoning I've used in this thread. Thanks for raising this issue. - Jimmy Kaplowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
