Re: gpl and hosted apps
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 04:49:31PM -0800, David M.Besonen wrote:
> in the meanwhile, how would *you* word language in the gplv3 that
> would cover this loophole (that's what i would call it)?
I'm not sure it's possible to require people running webservers with
hosted applications to release their source, without causing practical
problems as a side-effect. I'm undecided on whether I'd go as far as
Mark in saying that the goal itself is non-free, but I havn't seen
an incarnation yet without secondary ill effects.
> is there a general sense in the debian-legal community that modifying
> gpl'd apps and then hosting them without releasing the modified source
> is undesirable?
That's a question of the goals of copyleft, which is something d-legal
usually stays out of. We don't encourage copyleft any more than permissive
licenses; they're both just fine. Similarly, we're not likely to
encourage a super-copyleft that does what you say, above the GPL. We
look at restrictions, and try to make sure that their restrictions are
acceptable, but lack of copyleft is not considered a flaw.
(Due to the fact that Free Software has a substantial number of people
both of the copyleft view and the permissive view, this is the only way
we can all get along. :)
--
Glenn Maynard
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