Re: [Fsfe-uk] GPL licence untested, authors could lose their rights in UK

[Jason Clifford]

On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Sam Liddicott wrote:

> 
> WE know that the GPL means license rather than sale, but do the 
> customers infer such after reading the license? I think "not sold" is a 
> very important part of the statement, one that needs clearly making.
> 
> Should we limit the license such that if law implies certain extended 
> terms the license is rather revoked than extended?
> i.e. the software is licensed under such limited terms or not at all - 
> if local law extends warranty or license beyond limits then license is 
> not available in your locality.

I'm not sure that would hold as you'd be retroactively revoking the 
license in response to a courts ruling which might well be seen as 
contempt of the court.

Certainly the law already holds that there are some implied warranties - 
the warrantee that the software wont cause damage unless is states that it 
will.

Perhaps a more pertinent question is how the courts might consider 
damages. In the case of Free Software will the courts hold that the user 
clearly understood, or *should have understood*, that there would be no 
recourse to a claim for damages given that no license fee was paid. Of 
course in the case of software for which a charge of some kind has been 
made there is a basis for a claim for damages.

Still it's all academic unless someone tries to bring a case in which case 
the whole can of worms re software licensing terms is likely to come into 
question.

Jason Clifford
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