Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] GIT 1.5.4

From: Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms-D+Gtc/[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:02:26 -0500

Johannes Schindelin <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hi,
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Luciano Rocha wrote:

>> I was asking for the reasons for the installer being like it is, not for 
>> you to change your mind.

> I am sorry: I misunderstood.

> Two reasons: we stay on the safe side (because no lawyer could now 
> possible say that we forgot to present the license), and we want to give 
> the Git installer some "professional" look-and-feel ;-)

It is not unreasonable, I suppose, to display the license text in the
installer program, though I think it is sufficient to provide the
license in a simple LICENSE file, and it is hard to imagine anyone
actually wanting to read the license text while installing git.

I think it is not a good idea for a nice free software program like git
to show license text in a click-wrap way, as that will only give
credence to click-wrap licenses.

As far as the "professional" look and feel, rather than make git seem
more like the usual proprietary program (if you wanted to go that route,
perhaps you should bundle a root kit/"copy protection
mechanism"/adware/spyware like companies will often do :) ), I'd suggest
making it seem much _better_ than the usual proprietary program: the
user can look at the opportunity to install a program without having to
"agree" to onerous terms as a breath of fresh air.

As has been mentioned, installing and running the program is permitted
by fair use, and thus assuming he already has a copy of the software,
legally there is no need for the user to agree to any additional terms
before using the software.  The traditional EULA attempts to use
technical means to prevent the user from exercising his fair use rights;
in particular, it attempts to force the user to agree to certain terms
for essentially no compensation, as he already has fair use permission
to use the software anyway.  Naturally, such use of technical means is
completely antithetical to the idea of free software.

-- 
Jeremy Maitin-Shepard