Re: Do Debian's users care about the AGPL?
On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Gregory Seidman
<gsslist+debian@anthropohedron.net> wrote:
>
> Consider an AGPL'd app that has some open file format download. Evil Inc.
> takes said app, tears out the bit that sends the open format to the user
> and has it write to (server side) disk instead, then provides a link to a
> separate, closed source web app that reads the AGPL'd app's open format
> from disk and converts it to a proprietary format for download. Evil Inc.
> releases its changes to the AGPL'd app without exposing anything about
> their proprietary format. You, as a user, lose, and the AGPL was no help at
> all.
If the modified AGPL application by Evil, Inc., is doing a conversion
to a proprietary format as in your example, then the export functions
for the format are part of the application and thus included in the
source changes Evil, Inc. releases. This necessarily exposes the
proprietary format to reimplementation.
--
Chris
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