Would any HN lawyers like to chip in? From my understanding of contracts, that interpretation seems contrary to basic legal principles.
The obligation GPL would place on the developer would be to release the source code if the program is released under the GPL. Based on my reading of the blog post, that's exactly what one user was complaining about.
That's every license. You might be thinking of a contract, which is a binding agreement between two parties.
Think of a license as a grant of certain rights to the licensee. There's no binding agreement upon the licenser.
(Not an HN lawyer.)
Nope. I'm thinking of a license, which is a contract (go look it up if you don't believe me). And contracts can be a binding agreement between two or more parties.
I've looked it up, I can't find anything. Apparently in germany GPL is a contract, as in germany contracts don't require consideration. But in the US, GPL is a license, not a contract.
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
Here's another from UChicago Law that takes it for granted that the legal reader understands that licenses are legal contracts, since it's full of quotes like "all licenses are vulnerable to the usual attacks that can be leveled against all types of contracts".
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...