Re: Web application licenses

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

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.

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)

Michael Poole