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I suppose a better question would be "how drastic can the change be to the license?" because by adding that term, you're basically superseding every other term
by xmprt 2y ago
I suppose a better question would be "how drastic can the change be to the license?" because by adding that term, you're basically superseding every other term on the license. How do licenses deal with contradictory terms if that's even possible?
- tptacek 2y agoThe license is explicit that it can be updated unilaterally. Nobody can adopt this software and claim not to know that's a possibility. There are attorneys specializing in open source licenses who comment on HN regularly, and maybe they'll surprise us, but, as a non-lawyer nerding out on this stuff I put all my chips down on "this is legally fine".
- gitfan86 2y agoJudges don't enforce bad contracts. Imagine if a landlord sued a tenant after 1 year for a new roof of an apartment because the contract stated that "tenant will be responsible for all repairs" but the tenant pointed out that the contract also said "the house is in perfect and new condition". Both things cannot be true, so the judge throws it out. Same thing here, you can't grant someone a license to use something and then immediately say, "You can't use this without checking with us first" it is contradictory.
- xmprt 2y agoThe two reasons I think it's not that black and white is: 1. This brings up the question of being able to agree to a contract before the contract is written which makes no sense. 2. If it's legal then why don't all companies do it. Instead, companies like Google regularly put out updated terms of service which you have to agree to before continuing to use their service. Often times you don't realize it because it's just another checkbox or button to click before signing in.
- tptacek 2y agoThere are all sorts of contracts that can be unilaterally terminated.