[erlang-questions] A PropEr announcement

[Edmond Begumisa]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:56:59 +1000, Edmond Begumisa  
<ebegumisa@REDACTED> wrote:

> Just to clarify/reinforce, what gets a little confusing in these  
> discussions are the rights and obligations between licensor and  
> licensee, which is a contractual arrangement and subject to the doctrine  
> of privity.
>

CORRECTION: This was inaccurate. A licensee agreement is not strictly  
contractual agreement, but a license may be passed as consideration  
exchanged as part of a contractual agreement. Nevertheless, the privy  
doctrine usually applies to agreements in which licenses are past in most  
jurisdictions.

> [Continuing with the mentioned hypothetical]
>
> * If the PropEr developers have copies of QuickCheck Mini, then they  
> bind themselves to a license agreement with Quviq, including the promise  
> not to reverse engineer.
> * If PropEr is GPL'ed, and Vlad uses it, he binds himself to an  
> agreement with the PropEr developers, and the terms thereunder.
>
> Vlad is not privy to the first agreement, and thus can never be held  
> liable for its breach, if there is such a breach. And he cannot be  
> expected to stop using a version he already has. (Though he might have  
> the rug pulled out from under him, should PropEr development cease and  
> future versions stop being made.)
>
> However, assuming all parties are in Europe, and although the concept of  
> freedom of contract generally applies, they also bind themselves  
> doctrine that they can never make an agreement that contravenes codified  
> EU law - including said reverse-engineering law in said copyright  
> statute. Then the aggrieved party need not be privy to an agreement to  
> have their rights enforced since these rights are not established by an  
> agreement, but by a statute. In this case, Vlad and all PropEr users in  
> Europe could well be ordered by a court to cease using the program  
> regardless of any agreement they have with it's developers (since such  
> an agreement would be considered invalidated.) Hypothetically speaking.
>
> That said: Erlang being a small-friendly community -- I assumed (and  
> like to continue to a assume) that PropEr and QuickCheck developers have  
> not only been aware of each others projects, but I also like to think  
> that they've been in touch with each other and sorted out any such  
> concerns before version 1 of PropEr was announced. Like Erlang, I prefer  
> to think of the happy case!
>
> - Edmond -
>
>
> On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:23:04 +1000, Ulf Wiger  
> <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 16 Jun 2011, at 10:01, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 08:43, Ulf Wiger  
>>> <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 16 Jun 2011, at 08:30, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> This kind of issues are worse than flame wars! :-)
>>>>
>>>> I have yet another point of view that increases the confusion: PropEr  
>>>> is mostly compatible with Triq and QuickCheck (there's a free older  
>>>> version).
>>>
>>> Well, there is a version available in jungerl, but to my knowledge, it  
>>> was not put there by the authors, and not actually intended to be  
>>> free. Even so, one might consider it a lot less sensitive to copy that  
>>> version than the later, proprietary, versions of QuickCheck.
>>>
>>> Quviq released an official mini-version last year.
>>>
>>> http://www.quviq.com/news100621.html
>>
>> Yes, but the QuickCheck Mini license agreement, while permitting free  
>> use and re-distribution, specifically forbids reverse-engineering.  
>> Thus, we should hope that the PropEr developers did not obtain a copy  
>> of QuickCheck Mini and ran it in order to learn how it worked, as this  
>> would put them in violation of the EU Directives regarding software  
>> copyright.
>>
>> For those who are inspired by PropEr, but are put off by the GPL, using  
>> and re-distributing QuickCheck Mini is of course unproblematic. ;-)
>>
>> BR,
>> Ulf W
>>
>> Ulf Wiger, CTO, Erlang Solutions, Ltd.
>> http://erlang-solutions.com
>>
>>
>>
>
>


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