German software licensing law

Bernhard Reiter bernhard at intevation.de
Thu Oct 13 12:59:16 UTC 2005


On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 02:24:08PM +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> IANAL, but I don't think "licensing agreements" exist in law.  Legal
> agreements exist, they're called contracts.  Licenses exist, they're called
> licenses and they are one-way grants of rights.
> 
> Being clear about this matters because the GPL is a license (only).  It is
> not an agreement, and it's not a contract.

> Can someone correct me if I'm wrong?

I am also no expert in legal contract and licensing history, 
but I have heard that in some countries, e.g. Germany,
licenses are indeed currently considered some special form of a contract.
As far as I remember this is still under discussion so several
opinions might exists, too.
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