3 ms·
Ask HN: Are licensing agreemements protected by copyright law?
It's a strange question perhaps, but copyright law can be applied to creative works and it seems that most license agreements would satisfy that to some extent.
There's a fair use argument: but that seems to me like it should only extend to those who are licensed the software and anyone that they reasonably need to share it with (e.g.: legal or technical counsel).
Even then, fair use for licensees would extend only so far as using the license with regards to the licensed content;
Fair use would not permit the license being repurposed for use with other software.
I imagine that it's jurisdictional to some extent (or that I'm an idiot, who should just shut up already).
- mytailorisrich 2y agoYes, license agreements are copyrighted by default in the same way as everything else. You may have noticed the very top of the GPL v.3, for instance: Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <https://fsf.org/ https://fsf.org/> Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
- yarg 2y agoAnd with a license such as MIT, where no such statement is included? https://opensource.org/license/mit https://opensource.org/license/mit
- mytailorisrich 2y agoIn most jurisdictions (including US afaik) copyright is automatic and does not require any statements.