Re: Barriers to an ASP loophole closure
On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 17:59, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> David Turner <novalis@novalis.org> writes:
>
> > On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 12:00, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > > Software licenses are, almost by definition, the author placing
> > > obligations on everyone.
> >
> > Or removing them, in the case of Free Software licenses.
>
> Hah. Forced publication requirements *remove* no obligation
> whatsoever; rather, they create one where none existed before.
and Glenn Maynard writes:
> The GPL places lots of obligations on people in the interests of
> preserving people's freedom. "Placing obligations" isn't equivalent
> to "reducing freedom" (though they often coincide, and we should be
> skeptical about obligations that don't preserve freedom).
It seems that you both are claiming that licensing the code under the
GPL places greater obligations on recipients of the code than not doing
so. This is inaccurate -- in the absence of the GPL license, there's no
right to distribute source or binaries (modulo fair use, of course).
With the GPL, there is. So, distributees can either choose to go with
what they had (no right to distribute), or go with something which gives
more rights. How this amounts to an "obligation" is a mystery to me.
--
-Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668
"On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters
of principle, stand like a rock." -Thomas Jefferson
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