Re: gpl and hosted apps
On Fri, 3 Feb 2006, David M.Besonen wrote:
what ill effects would come of saying that if you host a gpl'd app
(modified or not) you have to make the source available?
Just coming up with a set of definitions to require such a thing is gonna
kill you. Start with "available" and "user". Be sure to consider the cases of:
services where bandwidth is expensive
services that don't want hax0rs to find exploits in their hacky modifications
services that are "used" by people off the net (ATM, coke machine, etc.)
services where actual trade secrets are part of the modifications
users of services they don't own (like my use of my ISP's DSL firmware)
indirect users (I ask someone to do something on my behalf. Who's the user?)
even more indirect users (I run software which uses software on your
system which uses software on some other system. Am I a user of that
other system?)
Put any proposal together, we can help decide if it's free. But you're
likely to be able to tell yourself once you have some concrete terms and
apply a few of Debian's standard tests (island test, dissident test).
Oh, that's handy: I just noticed Wikipedia has a brief and useful writeup
for 3 common tests of DFSG freedom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines.
--
Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>
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