A license effectively creates an implied contract when you use the object under license. A contract is any legally binding and enforceable agreement, and you must agree to the license (thereby making it binding and enforceable) in order to use the licensed work. Arguing that you have not entered into a contract effectively states that you are violating the rights of the original owner.
Restated: The *license* is not a contract, but agreeing to the license creates an implied contract.
In any jurisdiction where IP issues will ever be handled in a manner reasonable for these purposes, IP rights are of real value. The GPL grants you the right to propagate your derivative (an IP right), but only if you permit the original author (and others) the same rights of propagation (the reciprocal IP right). If you argue that IP rights are of no value, then we might as well toss the whole OSS community out the window.
~Bradley
Monty J. Harder wrote:
A license isn't a contract. There is no place for you to sign the GPL to agree to it. It's just that if you don't accept the GPL, you don't have legal permission to do what it licenses you to do.
On 9/27/07, Jon Pruente [email protected] wrote:
Another problem is that for a license to be binding in court it must function as a contract.