@@ -1969,48 +1969,56 @@ as mechanisms to perform acceptance ceremonies with EULAs.
The GPL does not need contract law to ``transfer rights.'' Usually, no rights
are transfered between parties. By contrast, the GPL is primarily a permission
slip to undertake activities that would otherwise have been prohibited
by copyright law. As such, GPL needs no acceptance ceremony; the
licensee is not even required to accept the license.
However, without the GPL, the activities of copying, modifying and
distributing the software would have otherwise been prohibited. So, the
GPL says that you only accepted the license by undertaking activities that
you would have otherwise been prohibited without your license under GPL\@.
This is a certainly subtle point, and requires a mindset quite different
from the contractual approach taken by EULA authors.
An interesting side benefit to GPLv2~\S5 is that the bulk of users of Free
Software are not required to accept the license. Undertaking fair and
unregulated use of the work, for example, does not bind you to the GPL,
since you are not engaging in activity that is otherwise controlled by
copyright law. Only when you engage in those activities that might have an
impact on the freedom of others does license acceptance occur, and the
terms begin to bind you to fair and equitable sharing of the software. In
other words, the GPL only kicks in when it needs to for the sake of
freedom.
While GPL is by default a copyright license, it is certainly still possible
to consider GPL as a contract as well. For example, some distributors chose
to ``wrap'' their software in an acceptance ceremony to GPL, and nothing in
GPL prohibits that use. Furthermore, the ruling in \textit{Jacobsen
v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373, 1380 (Fed.Cir.2008)} indicates that \textbf{both}
copyright and contractual remedies may be sought by a copyright holder
seeking to enforce a license designed to uphold software freedom.
\section{Using GPL Both as a Contract and Copyright License}
\section{GPLv2~\S6: GPL, My One and Only}
\label{GPLv2s6}
A point that was glossed over in Section~\ref{GPLv2s4}'s discussion of GPLv2~\S4
was the irrevocable nature of the GPL\@. The GPLv2 is indeed irrevocable,
and it is made so formally by GPLv2~\S6.
The first sentence in GPLv2~\S6 ensures that as software propagates down the
distribution chain, that each licensor can pass along the license to each
new licensee. Under GPLv2~\S6, the act of distributing automatically grants a
license from the original licensor to the next recipient. This creates a
chain of grants that ensure that everyone in the distribution has rights
under the GPLv2\@. In a mathematical sense, this bounds the bottom ---
making sure that future licensees get no fewer rights than the licensee before.
The second sentence of GPLv2~\S6 does the opposite; it bounds from the top. It
prohibits any licensor along the distribution chain from placing
additional restrictions on the user. In other words, no additional
requirements may trump the rights and freedoms given by GPLv2\@.
The final sentence of GPLv2~\S6 makes it abundantly clear that no individual
entity in the distribution chain is responsible for the compliance of any