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I don't think this ruling says 'you can ignore the license terms entirely.' In the article they said it wouldn't be legal to buy a license for five copies use f

I don't think this ruling says 'you can ignore the license terms entirely.' In the article they said it wouldn't be legal to buy a license for five copies use four and then separately sell the fourth. You can't 'split' the license, so attempting split the GPL'd software into the source component and binary component would continue to be disallowed. I think a better way to think about this is that the court is saying that the non-transferable clauses in software licenses are unenforceable, but the rest of the terms can be enforced. The court isn't going about invalidating licenses, they're regulating contracts, one of the fundamental roles of courts.

sageikosa 14y ago
So the court wouldn't allow me to sell piecemeal something I own (assuming I purchased) because a license says I have to distribute it with other things? Maybe, maybe not. As far as the required permissive transferability of licenses goes, what parts of the license terms will the new purchaser have to meet? Since some software is sold at different prices (or has different features) to different organizations and locations through primary channels, what restrictions will apply? Can educational copies only be resold to educational institutions? Can volume OEMs only resell to OEMs? Since a license is a grant of use, it implies that a grant given to one can now be transferred to someone else as long as the original gives up the privileges, but without the grantor having a say. Since the license also usually spells out what the grantor grants, it forces the grantor into a new relationship. It comes down to treating a license as a product, rather than a license; there will be impact, perhaps in how licenses are written in the future so as to have grantors disallow things, or require continuing payment for updates and support (my original contention on subscription software).

sageikosa 14y ago

So the court wouldn't allow me to sell piecemeal something I own (assuming I purchased) because a license says I have to distribute it with other things? Maybe, maybe not. As far as the required permissive transferability of licenses goes, what parts of the license terms will the new purchaser have to meet? Since some software is sold at different prices (or has different features) to different organizations and locations through primary channels, what restrictions will apply? Can educational copies only be resold to educational institutions? Can volume OEMs only resell to OEMs? Since a license is a grant of use, it implies that a grant given to one can now be transferred to someone else as long as the original gives up the privileges, but without the grantor having a say. Since the license also usually spells out what the grantor grants, it forces the grantor into a new relationship. It comes down to treating a license as a product, rather than a license; there will be impact, perhaps in how licenses are written in the future so as to have grantors disallow things, or require continuing payment for updates and support (my original contention on subscription software).