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Re: The Affero license



On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 11:29, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
> 
> > If the licenses closed the ASP loophole in a way that forced me to
> > publish *all* these changes (and AFAIK that's one of the things
> > which people are considering), then I could not use this software
> > because preparing the changes for distribution is often impossible
> > (due to time constraints and local configuration intertwined with
> > the code).
> 
> That's an excellent argument. And even if you said to the hell with it
> and offered download of your modified code with warts and all, a
> zealous upstream author might be (legally, not morally) justified in
> considering your intertwined local configuration, which may well
> prevent the software from running at all in another environment, to be
> an attempt to circumvent the sharing requirement, and sue you for
> infringement nevertheless.

This seems to be a serious stretch of the actual wording of (2)(d).  One
could also argue that any CD which includes GPL'd software is a
derivative work of that software.  But arguing it doesn't make it true. 
Let's talk about what the AGPL actually says, and not about how people
might misinterpret it.  The way (2)(d) works is that the original author
writes suitable quine-like functionality, and people who modify the
software can't remove it.  There's no need by people who merely run the
software to package anything up -- the software will be designed to do
this by itself.  


-- 
-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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