Re: The Affero license
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 04:40:25PM -0500, David Turner wrote:
> This seems to be a serious stretch of the actual wording of (2)(d). One
> could also argue that any CD which includes GPL'd software is a
> derivative work of that software. But arguing it doesn't make it true.
> Let's talk about what the AGPL actually says, and not about how people
> might misinterpret it. The way (2)(d) works is that the original author
> writes suitable quine-like functionality, and people who modify the
> software can't remove it. There's no need by people who merely run the
> software to package anything up -- the software will be designed to do
> this by itself.
The problem with this is that it is very likely that people will want to
use code for purposes other than those for which it was originally intended,
and this proposed license does not appear to take this into account; there
is no reason to suppose that what I create using someone's web app will be
a web app to which this clause could reasonably apply, indeed there is
every likelihood that it will go off in an entirely different direction
(which is one of the wonderful things about free software), and that this
clause would prevent it.
This alone, IMHO, should be sufficient reason for this clause to die.
Other reasons which would also be sufficient justification to kill (or at
least do some serious remodelling of) this clause have already been
mentioned in this thread; this one is just the one which bugs me most on
a personal level.
Cheers,
Nick
--
Nick Phillips -- nwp@lemon-computing.com
You may get an opportunity for advancement today. Watch it!
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