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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!192.207.105.50!prodigy.com!darkstar.prodigy.com!davidsen From: davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy Subject: Re: GPL Date: 11 Feb 1997 20:57:34 GMT Organization: TMR Associates, Schenectady NY Lines: 111 Message-ID: <5dqmfu$2hqo@usenet1y.prodigy.net> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5cvodo$hme@omega.gmd.de> <5db0q8$1f6i@usenet1y.prodigy.net> <5dd2mc$ad5@omega.gmd.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: darkstar.prodigy.com Originator: davidsen@darkstar.prodigy.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:158549 comp.os.linux.networking:68490 comp.os.linux.advocacy:84032 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2505 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:53032 comp.os.os2.advocacy:267765 In article <5dd2mc$ad5@omega.gmd.de>, Holger Veit <veit@borneo.gmd.de> wrote: | The point is here that the term 'license' is void in German law. What is | there are certain (difficult to translate without loss of juridical | semantics) "conditions in a trade contract". There are certain clauses | which are considered "surprising" and are therefore void. I'm trying to avoid snipping this out of context, but do I understand that if you buy a book you can add a chapter and republish it without the permission of the original author? Because I would think that unless this is true, it would not be "surprising" that you need permission to include a copyrighted work in your own. And that if you made copies of the copyrighted work, you would expect to need permission, and would have an agreement with the author, which in this case is that you can't restrict the additional distribution. | An example would | be if you would buy a car and find on page 75 of the trade contract that | you may drive it only on Wednesdays. Such a clause is void and a general | set of contract clauses will then apply. While it is obvious nonsense in | the car example to restrict the conditions of use, there have been numerous | attempts in the past in the area of trading with computer components and | software; to name a few that are void: | - If you buy a PC, the dealer may not void warrant if the customer opened | the case to add a common interface card component. | - If you buy a software, it is not possible, despite of copyright or some | clause in such a so-called license agreement, to forbid reverse-engineering | and analysis generally - the customer is allowed to do this if it is | necessary to integrate the component into a given environment (e.g. | analysis of a Windows driver installed by the product which will break | other code which was formerly working). This is no privateer-letter to | decompile anything you like, though! | - It is not allowed to request that the user does not run or install foreign | software (e.g. it is not allowed if a CAD vendor X requests that you must | delete competitive product B from vendor Y from the disk before getting | the permission to use X's product A. | - A "license agreement" of the type "you may use it, but the media and | any bit of data on it still belongs to us, and if you don't behave correctly, | we'll request both back" is accordingly invalid. Please trim the above if you followup. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com) Company policy prevents me from commenting on the performance of this distributed database. However, the machines on which it runs are called bottleneck and roadblock.