[pas]

Umm, so when you buy a copy of a proprietary software, why don't you have to sign and/or agree to the EULA?

Also, does the seller have to reimburse you if you decline the license (and of course return the copy)?

So you pay for the copy but not for the license, and you got the license free if you paid for the copy, right? (But of course that license comes with a lot of restrictions, just like the GPL.)

But the important thing seems to be that the GPL binds distributors. It's a contract between developers and distributors. (Sure, it's a contract between anybody that acquires a copy.)

Is there a coherent legal overview of this?

[roel_v]

You usually have to agree to some EULA. It's part of the contract. Second q depends on whether you could have known what's in the EULA before you bought it. They're not separate things. There is no such thing as 'buying' and 'agreeing to a licence' or anything like that. A 'licence' is just a contract: party A pays $X to party B, in exchange for which party B lets party A copy its IP, under a given set of conditions. 'pay for the copy but not for the licence' is a grammatically correct sentence but meaningless, like when I'd say 'I punch this wall red with my horse'. Copyright is about 'copying', so if that's what you mean by 'distributors', then yes. But so do 'EULA's' and all other IP-related contracts (usually called 'licences').

As to your last question: yes there is, people have written dozens of book about it. Your local university probably has a bunch of them in their library. If you're asking about a website where you can read in a few paragraphs the complete legal context with definitive answers to questions about general cases (i.e., no 'it depends' allowed) - then no, such a thing does not exist. Look at it this way: if a novice programmer goes onto LKML and says 'hey guys, I want to write an OS, can someone point me to an overview' - then at best he'd be pointed to some high-level overview Wikipedia pages, but most likely, people would snicker and press 'delete' (well actually he'd probably receive a bunch of abuse on how he should get off the list, but that's specific to the example I chose...)

FWIW, I did read a bunch of book like the ones I mentioned above when I was writing a paper on a EULA-related topic during my law degree, and as a result I don't make any blanket statements about the topic any more.

[pas]

> FWIW, I did read a bunch of book like the ones I mentioned above when I was writing a paper on a EULA-related topic during my law degree, and as a result I don't make any blanket statements about the topic any more.

Thanks, that's a completely satisfactory answer. (It's the Feynman-style "it's complicated, and any analogizing just makes it incorrect, thus making the analogy (or simile) useless" answer.)

And okay, they're are not separate things, but this sort of problem seems like what SCOTUS spends long minutes discussing in oral arguments. Because they are indeed separate things, one is a (physical or digital) copy and one is a grant of IP rights. At least't that's how I use the word. At least that's the piece of abstract thing that's necessary to make the copy non-infringing, right?

But, then, it comes down to good or bad faith of the seller. If the seller/vendor does not disclose the exact terms, but gives you the impression that after paying you you can use said copy for such and such purpose, that's seems to be 'false advertising'.