Re: non commercial use

[ On Sunday, April 27, 2003 at 14:08:22 (-0400), Jon Pastore wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: non commercial use
>
> I was merely stating that licensing is usually controlled separate from

Ah yes, I think I understand your confusion now! ;-)

Remember that the GPL, for example, is a properly just Copyright License. I.e. it is a license made under the copyright law which grants to the general public rights which would otherwise normally be automatically restricted by copyright law to the author of the work alone -- e.g. the right to freely copy, re-distribute, and to create derivative works is granted by the GPL provided that the source code, and the source for any changes, is always made freely available to the general public by anyone making any copies. The interesting thing about the GPL is that it allows one to make derivative works if and only if the source code for the changes is made freely available to everyone. The GPL doesn't say that you can't incorporate GPL'ed code into proprietary code -- it just requires that if you sell your proprietary code (i.e. distribute a derivative work) for a profit (i.e. make "commercial use" of the GPL'ed code) then you have to give away your derrivative source code for free. :-)

I think you're thinking of these licenses as contracts which are mutually agreed upon by the vendor and the purchaser.

The important thing is to try to understand the laws of a jurisdiction which make such licenses valid and binding, and thus under what circumstances they will be valid and binding, and what terms they may legally contain. A document can make any claims its author wishes to try to make, but it does not become a binding license if there's no law allowing it to be binding license. Copyright law only talks about certain types of rights, and they're reserved by default and a license can only grant those rights and place restrictions over when and how those rights are granted. Contract law covers agreements about practically anything which is itself a legal thing to do, but it requires mutual agreement between the parties. Now as I said I'm not a lawyer, but around here ignorance of the law is no excuse! ;-)

I'm saying that the SSH.com license is at best a copyright license where the non-copyright related restrictions can have no power over how you use a legally obtained single copy of their software; and at worst it is a shrink-wrap license that is likely totally unenforcable (i.e. it is not a binding agreement, especially since a copy can be legally obtained from any legal mirror with total anonymity, but rather it is just a document that cannot even be read until one has obtained and unwrapped a legal copy of the software).

Now of course where shink-wrap licenses are legal (I understand there are such horrible places in the world) it can probably be successfully argued that the downloader is agreeing to the contract simply by the act of downloading (though even then enough precedent might have been set by those going the extra step to having "I Agree" click-through buttons on agreements presented in front of their HTTP download pages, though even then without authentication there's no certainty that the downloader isn't just a robot). Happily I still live in a jurisdiction where such shrink-wrap licenses are as far as I know still strictly illegal. :-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            ;           
Planix, Inc. ; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird 

Do you need help?

In addition to our free technical library, Pantek provides professional IT services to companies who utilize Open Source software: Learn more about Pantek's Technical Support offerings Place an order for 24/7/365 Technical Support here Learn more about Pantek, who we are, and what we do Chat with a Live Operator Related securityfocus.com Links bugtraq certification focus-bsd focus-ids focus-ih focus-linux focus-ms focus-sun focus-unix-other focus-virus forensics incidents libnet linux-secnews ms-secnews pen-test secpapers secprog sectools secureshell security-basics securityjobs sf-news vuln-dev webappsec Request more information about Pantek