On 9/16/2015 11:32 PM, John Cowan wrote: >> Doesn't that mean that the word "irrevocable" is meaningless? We don't >> like words without meaning in contracts, especially one so central to >> the entire premise of free software. > It's my view (and I'm not alone in this) that the vast majority of free > software licenses are not contracts at all, and are like licenses to > enter upon land: that is, they are permissions by the owner to do things > that would otherwise be forbidden to all by the owner's proprietary rights > in the property. As such, they are not supported by consideration and > can be revoked at the will of the licensor. Most proprietary licenses > are not like this: the license is provided in exchange for obvious > consideration in the form of money paid by the licensee. Without entering into that quagmire (other than to quote Heather Meeker, "The Free Software Foundation has long taken the position that open source licenses are licenses rather than contracts -- however, this can be misleading because the two are not mutually exclusive. Most licensing contracts are both conditional licenses and contracts"), my use of the word "contract" was simply inapt. The principle applies in the interpretation of all types legal documents.
Pam Pamela S. Chestek Chestek Legal PO Box 2492 Raleigh, NC 27602 919-800-8033 [email protected] www.chesteklegal.com _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
