Before this parliamentary decree, the purchaser of a tulip contract—known in modern finance as a forward contract—was legally "obliged" to buy the bulbs. The decree changed the nature of these contracts, so that if the current market price fell, the purchaser could opt to pay a penalty and forgo receipt of the bulb, rather than pay the full contracted price. This change in law meant that, in modern terminology, the futures contracts had been transformed into options contracts—contracts which were extremely favorable to the buyers.