Re: Web application licenses

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> wrote:
> Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> > Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> 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.
> >>"""
> > 
> > So if I use software under such a license in a network switch, to whom
> > am I obliged to distribute source?  How about a web proxy?
> 
> My _intent_ with the phrase "direct use" was to avoid such issues.  I'm
> aiming only for the case where a user directly _interacts_ with the
> software, so perhaps I should have said "direct interaction" instead of
> "direct use".

It is difficult for me to see how you define "direct use" to include
something like Apache, but not include something like libc or the
kernel.  It seems a bit of a stretch to require people to distribute
those when they are just running a webserver.  It would make it much,
much, much, much harder to set up a public website.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu