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Re: Web application licenses



On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 07:45:03PM -0400, 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.
> 
> 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)

And indeed, given the classification of software as a literary work, I
am not at all convinced that it is possible to write a license with a
restriction that closes the "remote application hole".

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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