🚀 go-pugleaf

If the GPL's malicious section 2b didn't have the virus effect, and if
unknowing programmers were adequately informed of what they'd have to do
if they distributed GPL-covered code, then opposition to it would almost
vanish.

In article <PCG.90Apr25205938@rupert.cs.aber.ac.uk> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
> In article <970016@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes:
> 	[ the GPL requires the copyright holder of any work
> 	that includes GPL work to grant the right to copy the whole
> 	work which terms equivalent to the GPL's ]
> 	[ Somebody objects that this is not a valid contract because
> 	such contract does not include consideration ]

Whether contracts require consideration is (at least here) decided by
the states. In New York the GPL is prima facie unenforceable. It appears
that as an contract of adhesion the GPL must be interpreted against the
restricted party; there's a strong argument that all the limitations of
the author's rights can be upheld, without any of the ambiguous or
unenforceable restrictions upon those limitations. I wish someone would
test this in court.

A more specific applicable decision is the Federal decision in Louisiana
a few years back that shrink-wrap licenses are unenforceable. This is
really a question of warning: if people using GPL-covered code were
adequately informed of the real extent of their rights under the GPL
before they received copies of the code, then it probably wouldn't
qualify as a shrink-wrap license.

A much more general principle making the same point extremely clear
appears in a section of the United States copyright statutes: an author
can never be unwillingly deprived of his exclusive copyrights. It's a
real shame NeXT didn't try this tack when they were bulldozed into
distributing their compiler for free because they hadn't realized the
effects of the GPL. If you're an author, and you've been selling a
product derived from GNU code without realizing the effects of the GPL,
and now the FSF is trying to steal your profits: Read 17 USC!

> In
> particular the GPL itself is not a contract, as far as I can understand
> the issue.

All licenses are contracts.

---Dan