Mac wrote: > That seems to me not contract, but a beautiful and unexpected > inversion of copyright law. I'm sorry, but I don't understand this line of argument... Let me explain my understanding first, then someone can tell me what I'm missing...
- A contract is a legally binding agreement between two parties (which may, to be fair, be overturned by the courts) - Any contract exists inside a legal framework, which includes ALL the relevant law of the land. As I understand things, the classification of the law into things like "copyright law", "property law" and "contract law" is a matter of convenient terminology, not of something that has any legal status. - A software licence is a contract between a developer and a user. Example 1: I (as the owner of a rental property) have a contract (a tenancy agreement) with someone who uses that property (a tenant.) I give them certain rights (they can use the property as their home), they incur certain obligations (they have to pay me rent.) They don't have extra rights beyond those stated either in the contract, or accepted in the part of the law (property law) that governs such contracts, so they can't, for example, use the rental property to run a business. Example 2: I (as a software developer) have a contract (licence agreement) with someone who uses that software (a user). I give them certain rights (whatever are determined in the licence agreement), they incur certain obligations (which may or may not involve paying me a fee, or having an obligation to, say, provide the source code of any modifications they release). They don't have extra rights beyond those stated either in the contract, or accepted in the part of law (copyright law) that governs such contracts, so they can't, for example, deploy a single copy of AardvarkManager 1.0 on all their employees desktops, if the licence they have purchased is a single-PC licence. To create a set of new obligations on a party, one of three things needs to happen: - The appropriate law-making body (in the UK, Parliament+Royal Assent) needs to pass a new law, or amend an old one. - The party needs to sign a new contract. - A set of "conditional obligations" (If X happens, then you will have to do Y) in a contract already agreed needs to be triggered (X needs to happen) The GPLv2 included a term that allowed any contract signed under the GPLv2 to be upgraded, (by mutual consent) to an unspecified future version of the GPL, in this case GPLv3. However, once a programmer has granted a licence, the programmer can't unilaterally withdraw that licence - so any software currently licenced under the GPLv2 remains legal. (Freedom, once granted, endures.) The programmer may, of course, decide to issue no further licences, and say that "as of now, the only licences granted will be under the GPLv3" - that's fine, and I support their right to make that decision. Where the Microsoft / Novell thing has strayed into murky territory is that Microsoft have effectively entered into some "future support contracts" with a bunch of third parties, in conjunction with Novell. At the time that these contracts were sold, Microsoft was in a position where it believed that it, and Novell, would be able to deliver on its commitment (or at least, this is what they would argue in court.) However, Novell are now selling some products licenced under the GPLv3. Some specific provisions of the GPLv3 mean that it may no longer be possible for Microsoft to deliver on the contract it originally signed, and Microsoft/Novell may not be able to provide the support they sold without breaching a different contract (the GPLv3). In the UK, it's hard to see how the courts would do anything other than demand that MS refund the price paid for the support contract, plus, probably, interest, and (maybe) the difference in price required to fund someone else to "do the support" the original contract called for. In the US, the concept of "punitive damages" exists, so that MS might have to refund the price, and pay some kind of fine if they refused to honour the support contract (and thus breach the GPLv3.) It would be one hell of a court case - if someone sued Microsoft, then they'd immediately call Novell as a co-defendant, and let the courts decide who needed to make good on the broken contracts. What I don't see (and this is where I came in - in disagreeing with some of the web articles written) is that a customer calling for support on a GPLv3 product under one of these contracts would automatically mean that Microsoft had breached the law. No, at worst, they might be in a position where it wasn't possible for them to provide the contracted services. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
