Open source Free software 2621
It does not get better by repeating it. That what is commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as a copyright license, namely something that further restricts the default user's right and thus requires his agreement (usually feigned as "I agree" clicking), is a contract (and not a license). Only a contract can make the user agree to not exercising the full rights otherwise available to him.
Actual copyright licenses are pretty rare. The name "copyright license" with reference to something like the MS EULA is sort of an oxymoron, since it prohibits what copyright would allow.
So in a sort of Orwellian twist, the run-of-the-mill software "copyright license" happens not to be a license, but rather a contract.
Merijn de Weerd Moglen and his underlings are not really "lawyers". They are propagandists of GNU Law crapola. IBM's US lawyers are on record with two...
But that does not change that the GPL indeed is actually a license, unlike most others. So are the BSD license, the X11 license, the LGPL and quite a number of other free, and also some non-free licenses, few of which ever get dragged before court for the same reason that nobody wants to drag the GPL before court: you don't want to say "Your Honor, please rule that I had no license to do what I did".
-- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum