Re: Classification of the APSL as non-DFSG-compliant
On 4/20/20 12:54 PM, Mihai Moldovan wrote:
> * On 4/20/20 12:32 PM, Tobias Frost wrote:
>>>> Distributing to friends may cross the line of personal use. And !"personal use" != "commercial use".
>>>> (I define "personal use" as individual use; not use of a group.)
>>>>
>>>> Also, there may be an Dissident Inc; also that needs the Dissident Test to pass.
>
> Or something like an NGO, which strictly is also a business (even if not for
> profit).
I will check that with Apple Legal but I don't consider it a problem for an
organization to share the sources along their binaries.
>>>> The last sentence reads to me that distributiong to 3rd parties is Deployment.
>>>> Your dissident friend is a "third party".
>>>>
>>>> However, if it is the intention of that paragraph that commercial use is to be
>>>> treated differently, this alone would alone is a reason to call a license
>>>> non-free (DFSG §6).
>
> No discrimination against fields of endeavor and commercial use. Yep.
I don't see how it's explicitly discriminating commercial use when this rule applies
to non-commercial use as well (see 1.8). If you distribute the source publicly, you
also have to share the sources.
>>> How is that different from the GPL-2 which mandates three years of distribution
>>> for non-personal distribution. I have the impression that you are applying
>>> double-standards here.
>>>
>>> Any commercial product using GPL-2 must share the source code publicly, the
>>> same applies to the APSL-1.2. There is no difference.
>>
>> No. the GPL requires you only to give the sources to the recipient of the work,
>> not to everyone which is the defintiopn of "publicily" [1].
>
> Additionally, the "three-year clause" in the GPL v2 is an option (which can
> easily be circumvented by choosing a different option, e.g., to always
> distribute binaries and source at the same time) for a written *offer* to
> distribute sources upon request by the binary recipient.
You effectively have the same option for the APSL as well. If you ship your
modifications along binaries - which we do - as well from the beginning, I
don't see how you are violating against the APSL.
The only difference between GPL and ASPL is here how long you have to share
your modifications when you are not shipping the sources with the binary.
> The key difference here is "public" vs. "recipient". For instance, in the Desert
> Island Test, an entity that is unable to communicate with the island can neither
> receive binaries nor request source distribution, which is fine.
I think that the use case of a business on a remote island which is modifying
and distributing software is a very constructed situation.
It's also not described in the dissident test.
But I will ask Apple and SUSE legal.
Thanks,
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
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