Re: Barriers to an ASP loophole closure

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

David Turner <novalis@novalis.org> writes:

> On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 20:21, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > David Turner <novalis@novalis.org> writes:
> > 
> > > Here, I think Apache is closer to router software than to PHPNuke. 
> > > PHPNuke is distinguishable because it's not designed to do some standard
> > > thing -- instead,  users choose to visit PHPNuke sites in part because
> > > of their specific, unique features.  
> 
> I retract this, mostly.  After reading Mark Rafn's note, I think Apache
> is closer to PHPNuke than to a router.
> 
> > This is irrelevant, because it presumes that this difference will last
> > forever, for all future uses of the code, into eternity.
> 
> I don't understand this.

I'm not sure it matters, since you've retracted it, but the principle
might still apply.  So I'll spell out more clearly:

For any given piece of software, you can never argue for or against a
license restriction that you know what that software will be used
for.  If the license attaches a condition in perpetuity, it's
reasonableness *cannot* depend on you knowing what the software is
used for or even what kind of job it happens to do.

This is true because the whole *point* of this enterprise is that the
original author *cannot* know what use you want to put things to, and
that you might very well imagine some use for parts of that code which
are radically, wildly, different, from anything he could have
imagined.