[copyleft-next] What do copyleft licenses gain from an acceptance clause?

Stephen Michael Kellat skellat at fastmail.net
Sat Sep 1 02:45:31 UTC 2012


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Thank you for the disclosure of an ex parte discussion.  This bit of
background does help in understanding discussion.  As noted separately
by Luis, we need to ensure usability by non-lawyers of the license that
we develop.

I also thank everyone for the excellent decorum here.  The Creative
Commons discussions over Non-Commercial and No-Derivatives have been
full of heat but no light thus far.

Stephen Michael Kellat
Head Writer, Erie Looking Productions
http://erielookingproductions.info
alpacaherder at identi.ca

On 08/31/2012 08:02 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> The following is a Harvey Birdman Rule conversation disclosure.
>
> At LinuxCon, Fontana and I were discussing his change in:
> commit 5823daf41d2bbb757e49b87b8e697fd793317019
> Author: Richard Fontana <fontana2012 at gmail.com>
> Date: 2012-07-05 18:44:45 -0400
>
> Wherein he removes the acceptance clause entirely from copyleft-next. I
> argued briefly that perhaps the acceptance clause was useful, because it
> allowed a contract claim to more easily be brought when copyright
> infringement has occurred (basically as a secondary cause of action
> and/or legal claim, which could be argued in the alternative of
> copyright infringement).
>
> Ultimately, I agreed with Fontana that perhaps the acceptance provision
> isn't terribly useful from an enforcement perspective, because copyright
> law gives us all the tools we need, and we don't get specifically an
> additional enforcement claim simply because the entity engaged in
> activities governed by copyright law is reminded of their obligations
> and that they have no other license.
>
> However, this question probably deserves more study, as if there is some
> additional benefit that GPLv2 and GPLv3 families of licenses are getting
> from having an acceptance clause, then one should also be present in
> copyleft-next.
>
> In particular, Fontana notes that it might be possible that the
> acceptance clause is doing something different entirely unrelated to
> bringing forth a contract claim.

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