🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun3.184025.6558@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> edguer@charlie.CES.CWRU.Edu (Aydin Edguer) writes:
>    d) You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a
>    copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in
>    exchange for a fee.
>
>What this means is that if a company XXXX does a port of the software,
>they may require the purchase of "warranty protection".

How does "offer" turn into "require"?

The above clause is simply permitting individuals and organizations (such
as Cygnus) to charge for the services of distributing and maintaining a
copylefted program.  But it doesn't specifically say that they can force
someone to purchase the warranty protection.

Of course, there are ways that a distributor can do this.  Perhaps the only
product they actually sell is maintenance; when you purchase this, you get
a copy of the software that they are maintaining.  For instance, Cygnus
might sell Emacs maintenance; if someone doesn't already have a copy of
Emacs, Cygnus would presumably be glad to install it when they purchase
maintenance.

-- 
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar