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

[Sam Liddicott]

Alex Hudson wrote:

On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 18:39 +0100, Sam Liddicott wrote:
  

I remember my old CPM documentation used to say very clearly
THIS SOFWTARE IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD

Perhaps we need to do that a bit more.
    

That's what we're effectively doing already, to be honest.
  

I don't think so, and not if a judge may be able to imply title.

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.

Another way to manage this is to require that the customer make some slight "modifications" in order to run the software, and thus having changed its nature the licensor can then be held less responsible for it.

i.e. ship software that won't quite run.

The nature of such a mechanism is open for discussion.

Sam