Re: PHPNuke license

[Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org>]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:08:28PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> >      <programming> A term describing a program whose input and
> >      output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the
> >      user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run.
> 
> In each run, PHPNuke receives a single request and sends a single result. 
> There is no interleaving.
> 
> Now, you could argue that with session cookies, etc. that makes all the
> difference, but unless PHPNuke is broken without them, I don't think that
> argument works.

It's just another case of a word that's difficult to define precisely: to
include everything we subjectivally consider "interactive", especially
considering the fact that we don't all agree on what's "interactive", and
that some of us can't quite make up our mind.

A license needs to pick its own definition (which is dangerous, since it's
likely to miss cases the license author didn't think of, which is why
technical definitions are bad in licenses[1]) and use it.  Here, the GPL is
ambiguous and all we can do is go with what the copyright holder says, which
is that PHPNuke is interactive.

[1] In other words, I'm stressing that whatever the solution to this
is (wrt the license), it is *not* to try very hard to define
"interactive"; it will fail and probably make a big mess of odd
interpretations in the process.

-- 
Glenn Maynard