Michael Poole wrote: > Josh Triplett writes: >>How about something vaguely like: >> >>""" >>If you make the software or a work based on the software available for >>direct use by another party, without actually distributing the software >>to that party, you must either: >> >>a) Distribute the complete corresponding machine-readable source code >>publically under this license, or >>b) Make the source code available to that party, under the all the same >>conditions you would need to meet in GPL section 3 if you were >>distributing a binary to that party. >>""" > > For the purposes of making it a purely copyright based license, it is > probably desirable to only have such a clause kick in for works based > on the software. Use (whether by the recipient or by third parties) > of software is not, as far as I know, a right reserved under copyright > law -- but preparing a derived work is. Agreed, especially considering that if the work was completely unmodified and separate, then you could just as easily obtain the source of the original Free Software program (assuming it is generally available, which will cover the vast majority of cases). So other than that, you would consider this clause Free? > At least one previous discussion has mentioned "public performance" of > a work being controlled by copyright, and using this as a lever to > achieve the above. My reading of 17 USC 106(4) suggests that this is > not applicable to software. > (See http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106.html) Based on that, it indeed does not seem to apply, assuming that the software cannot be construed as an "audiovisual work" (which would depend on the software). - Josh Triplett
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