Re: copyleft (was: Re: Owning a piece of my mind)

[Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com>]

Well, OK. I probably am assigning a narrow meaning to shrinkwrap.  But the broader issue of having to agree to terms before redistributing or reselling something isn't really new.  Many services and products have licencing or purchase agreements which prohibit or regulate resale, or limit liability or something. Usually businesses are involved in redistributing things, and there are always terms of use. They are expected and anticipated. The difference here is that there isn't a purchase agreement in place to make limitations on  resale.  But such practices have been enforced on "free" things such as ideas through patents and other means for a long time.  So some imposition of restrictions on the commercial use or resale of something that is otherwise free isn't unique to the software industry.  I don't think I'd call this shrinkwrap, but I see a similarity in that both are really motivated by a desire to avoid having a complex purchase and sale agreement in which terms of use or redistribution could be specified. 

		--Dean

Around 04:41 PM 12/14/1999 -0500, rumor has it that Prof. Michael H. Davis said:
>Dean:
>I think you're imposing a particular meaning on the word shrink wrap. My
>email was only meant to illustrate that the significance of shrink wrap
>need not be limited to only the conventional situations in which it has
>so far been found, and to understand it in more than that narrow sense.
>I don't think I succeeded. It need not be an end user, and it need not
>be limited to only certain uses, or use itself. To the extent the
>license limits the user in any way, and to the extent that use of the
>product is limited to acceptance of those limits, it still suffers from
>what we complain about in criticizing shrink wrap in the conventional
>situation. I tried to be careful about making judgments--it seems clear
>to me that shrink wrap in this situation may be very good for all sorts
>of reasons; I just don't think it helps to deny its true nature in order
>to justify its terms. Perhaps I failed in trying to explain that the
>conventional understanding of shrink wrap is unduly narrow.
>
>Mickey Davis
>

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