Message-ID: <42112DEB.5030707@fulhack.info>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:02:03 +0100
From: Henrik Persson <root@fulhack.info>
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20050111)
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To: Paolo Ciarrocchi <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com>
Cc: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>, lm@bitmover.com,
       Matthew Jacob <lydianconcepts@gmail.com>,
       Jeff Sipek <jeffpc@optonline.net>,
       Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <bzolnier@gmail.com>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [BK] upgrade will be needed
References: <20050214020802.GA3047@bitmover.com>	 <58cb370e05021404081e53f458@mail.gmail.com>	 <20050214150820.GA21961@optonline.net>	 <20050214154015.GA8075@bitmover.com>	 <7579f7fb0502141017f5738d1@mail.gmail.com>	 <20050214185624.GA16029@bitmover.com>	 <20050214203651.GA24554@stusta.de> <4d8e3fd3050214132512989629@mail.gmail.com>
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Paolo Ciarrocchi wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:36:51 +0100, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
> 
>>Disclaimer:
>>I did never use BK and I do not plan to use it.
> 
> 
> Same here, but just because I'm not a developer ;-)
>  
> [...]
> 
>>I don't know about copyright law in other countries (and the USA have
>>both a pretty different legal system and a pretty different copyright
>>law than Germany), but in Germany the clause you mentioned is simply
>>void according to German copyright law.
>>
>>German copyright law doesn't distinguish whether you get money for
>>allowing the usage of the program or not.
>>
>>The licence is still valid but the clause is void.
>>
>>I can accept a void licence clause because this doesn't make it
>>non-void. That's not uncommon. Perhaps 95% of all software licences
>>contain clauses that are simply void.
>>
>>In case you ask:
>>No, there is no case law in Germany - we have a different legal system.
>>
>>If you like it or not - at least for people in Germany, I see no way how
>>the law allows you to enforce what you are trying to do.
>>
>>You can say it might be morally wrong to break this licence clause - but
>>this doesn't make it illegal.

If we bring moral into the game, alot of people would say that it's 
immoral of bitmover to have such a license.. I might agree. ;)

> I think this is true not only in Germany, if I were Larry I would
> check if the licence is valid in EU.

Well..read the archives. This has been discussed at least once before, 
with the same conclusions.

This is just noise noise noise. We've heard it all before. :)

-- 
Henrik Persson
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