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

[Gary Momarison]

Grant Griffin <g2 at seebelow.org> writes:

> IANAL (APOI*), but notice that the license term is not specified.  One
> is tempted to infer "perpetual" from the text above (that is,
> "_Perpetual_ permision..."), but that is not stated explicitly (as it is
> in many licenses--for example, dspGuru's own.)

I don't know how one could infer anything else, but IANAL either.

I read in a couple of places (eg, /.) a couple of months ago of some
company's lawyers claiming the GPL for their purchased copyright in some
program was revocable (I think the claim was "terminate"-able - not
sure) for some legal reason that wasn't reported well. Something to do
with the claim that the contract wasn't binding because there was no
"consideration" (legal jargon sorta meaning "payment") on the part of
the licensees.

I've haven't read of anyone else giving that "legal opinion" (if it was
one) any credence, but I'd think it would apply to most "Public
Licenses", CWI license included, if it applied to the GPL.

One must take chances to get on with life -- and sometimes buy insurance.