On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 08:56:02PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> After some thought, I submit the following:
>
> One cannot simultaneously argue that displaying a website is presenting a
> user interface subject to 2c and that it constitutes distribution of the
> program.
>
> If it constitutes distribution, it is fundamentally a different act than
> displaying a user interface, and thus 2c does not apply to the mere display
> since there is no display going on.
>
> If it is a user interface, that is fundamentally a different act than
> distribution, and requirements to distribute in source form, unmodified, do
> not apply, since there is no distribution going on at all.
>
> I think it would be a very hard sell to claim that it is doing both
> simultaneously. It's enough of a stretch to claim that it's doing one.
An excellent analysis; however, one that I think is doomed to fall to
the realpolitik of software licensing these days.
We've had enough of this freedom business; it's apparently time we
started putting as many silly and onerous restrictions on users as we
can manage, from Invariant Sections and Cover Texts; to forbidding
people to sell a "free" work by itself, while permitting it when it's
aggregated with "Hello, World"; to interpreting anything that done under
the GNU GPL to simultaneously be usage, distribution, display
("performance" in Title 17 jargon), and modification.
--
G. Branden Robinson | You are not angry with people when
Debian GNU/Linux | you laugh at them. Humor teaches
branden@debian.org | them tolerance.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- W. Somerset Maugham
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