Re: [tlug] Apple owns CUPS

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Marty Pauley writes:

 > That is a type of estoppel in British law.  We can't find any
 > precedent for this type of estoppel being used with software licences.
 > It could work, but the court could also tell you that you were stupid
 > for relying on it.

That's pretty much what Larry Rosen says in his book, except that he
seems pretty confident that it would stand up in the case of free
software.

But is there any other way for a licensee to prevent revocation of a
bare license in British law?  Larry implies there is not, in the U.S.

 > But in British law, to revoke a licence the licensor must give notice
 > to the licensees.  With widely distributed Free Software, it may be
 > almost impossible to give notice: if I am using the software, and
 > there is no way for you to tell me to stop, I still have the right to
 > use it.

In U.S. law, you can't tell anybody to stop using free software
(unless you can show the copy was illegally acquired or they actually
"signed" a EULA permitting them to terminate the license), because of
the doctrine of first sale.  (I would imagine that applies to British
law too.)  It's also essentially impossible to stop purely personal (I
don't mean "corporate person") copying, because to find out that it
happened would require an invasion of privacy.

However, you *can* tell people to stop copying and redistributing once
you discover they've done so, and you could probably notify a couple
dozen major sites (starting with SourceForge and Savannah) and get
most of the major distributors (and enough publicity that other
distributors might find themselves in lukewarm water if you took them
to court).  Nor (in the U.S.) would you have to notify everybody, you
could start by notifying people you dislike, then their mothers, then
everybody who looks like them, and then let the rest of the world
continue, and as long as you could stay fair of free trade laws, it
would stand up. 

It is true there's no way such a rightsholder could collect damages
unless they formally serve you with notice and you keep distributing
anyway.