quoting paul linehan plinehan yahoo com the point here is that under french law the author can change the terms of the licence arbitarily this is because any granting of rights by an author must be clearly delimited in terms of how long where to whom dates and times the gpl and similar licences are explicitly permanent grants of rights attached to an instance of his work the other stuff mentioned concerns contract law e g the required element of privity etc in the absence of such limitations the original author has the right to change his software back to closed on a whim no the author has the right to issue _additional_ instances under a different licence such as a proprietary closed sic licence rick moen makes the point that it is not a sale but rather a granting of rights which are not default see the bit about even the granting of rights by an author having to be explicitly specified under french law the analysis here and elsewhere concerns contract law this isn t contract law this isn t the first time copyright attorneys have stumbled on this subject i m sure it won t be the last cheers the front line of defense against such sophisticated rick moen viruses is a continually evolving computer operating rick URL system that attracts the efforts of eager software developers bill gates irish linux users group ilug URL URL for un subscription information list maintainer listmaster URL 