Questions for Guido van Rossum (Was: ...Tim Peters)

[Gary Momarison]

Greg Ewing <see at my.signature> writes:

> Gary Momarison wrote:
> > 
> > All licenses are contracts. Any
> > agreement between two people is a contract.
> 
> But a license (of the sort we're talking about here,
> at least) isn't a two-way thing, it's a one-way
> thing. In this case, it's a statement of what CNRI
> is willing to allow people to do with its intellectual
> property. It doesn't require anyone to agree to it in
> order to be effective. If it disallows something, it
> still disallows it even if someone doesn't agree with
> that.
> 
> So I can't see how you can regard it as a contract.
[snip]

But a license is moot if nobody, as a party to the license,
accepts it.  And it cannot disallow anything that is not already
disallowed without the license.  It can only allow some things.

I've been consulting two of many on-line legal dictionaries.

http://www.wwlia.org/diction.htm            [seemingly better definitions]
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/inp05.htm      [more definitions]

One says "licenses are contracts...".

The other indicates that some licenses are not supported by, or are not
based on, a contract.  These licenses are called "simple" or "bare"
licenses and are revocable at any time. MIT/BSD/CWI licensors beware!

They also indicate that a contract is in effect at the point one party
indicates (intentionally or not, by action or inaction) a willingness
to accept the terms of an offer and both parties are bound by the terms.
In some jurisdictions (which?), an exchange of "consideration" (eg, 
benefits or rights) is also required but this is becoming less common.

It would be easy to argue that any license involves an offer and an
acceptance (as I started to do above), but apparently courts don't
always buy it, even when "consideration" is not a consideration.

BTW, our "crossing my property" example was mentioned.  A license is
different from an easement (which was said to be the same as the legal
term "Right of Passage", though "right of passage" (layman's language)
is obviously being licensed in the example.   Sounds reasonable, sorta.

Another example: One usually has "implied license" to enter a shopping 
mall.

One said an "offer" was "an explicit...", implying that contracts cannot
be implied (and thus also implying that a license is not necessarily a 
contract), but I wouldn't bet until I do more reading.