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

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    i'm not a lawyer, but i fail to understand whether the GPL is
    a contract or not.

The GPL is not a contract; it is a unilateral grant of permission to
do certain things that copyright law normally prohibits.

    If it is not a contract, but simply a statement of
    what terms the copyright owner will license reuse or copying
    of the work under, no matter what the jurisdiction, then
    why isn't it a shrinkwrap license?

A shrink wrap license *is* a contract (provided it is legally valid at
all, which is something courts have disagreed about).  Since the GPL
is not a contract, it is nothing like a shrink wrap license.