Re: Web application licenses
Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> writes:
>>>My point is, you are asking for too much control over how the other
>>>party uses their hardware. You should certainly have the right to use
>>>it on your own hardware; that would be more freedom than you have now,
>>>and certainly enough to consider it Free Software. I'm sure that there
>>>is plenty of software in Debian main that neither of us could take
>>>advantage of for whatever reason. That does not make the software any
>>>less Free.
>>
>> True, but your argument for why they should have to give me copies of
>> their software is that to do so enhances my freedom. I don't
>> understand why that argument applies to software and not hardware. If
>> I implement an Emacs Machine, which provides Emacs but only in
>> hard-wired circuits, but in such a way that it's a derivative of a
>> work under this license, is it free to require me to give you one? To
>> give you the plans?
>
> If you give me access to such a machine, you would need to give me the
> plans for that machine, yes; you certainly would not be required to
> distribute the machine itself.
>
>> Why is the answer different for software?
>
> It isn't. The "plans" for software are the source code, and the
> "machine" would be the binary. This proposed license would require you
> to distribute the source code; it says nothing about distributing the
> binary (if the two are distinct, anyway).
OK. So if I'm using a machine to provide you with an Emacs service, I
have to give you the plans. For a software machine, does that include
the OS kernel? The VMware instance I'm running it in? The underlying
OS? The CPU, the network drivers?
The GPL has a clear place to draw a line: what is distributed with the
work, and not part of the OS. It can do that because it's tying into
copyright law, and the idea of distribution is clear. I don't think
you have anything like that clear line for use.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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