On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 11:58, Brian T. Sniffen wrote: > > Only when you're playing the game of trying to push the definition of > > "user" as far as you can push it. And that's a perfectly legitimate > > and good thing to do when you're discussing a license text, but in > > doing so you shouldn't forget that there's also an ordinary, every-day > > definition that doesn't get pushed so far. > > When I say you're a user of router software, I'm not pushing the > definition of user any further than you are when you say I'm a user of > PHP-nuke or Apache.
Here, I think Apache is closer to router software than to PHPNuke. PHPNuke is distinguishable because it's not designed to do some standard thing -- instead, users choose to visit PHPNuke sites in part because of their specific, unique features. As an example, I read Luke Francl's blog more than I read Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's. Why? Because Luke Francl users software which supports RSS output, so I can get it syndicated. On the other hand, what web server someone uses affects my usage of the site not at all. > > The ordinary, every-day use of the term is fuzzy, acknowledges > > inconsistencies, and works anyway. Ask the next guy you meet that > > uses computers but doesn't care about licensing whether they're using > > apache when they look at apache.org. Do you honestly think he'd say > > yes? Or the NYT's typesetting software when they read the paper? > > I think he'd say he doesn't use either. But then when I asked him > what he used to read his mail, he'd either say "Oh, I use Netscape" or > "Oh, I use Yahoo! mail". I've observed a number of the nontechnical > users I support failing to distinguish between their OS, browser, home > page, and other web sites. I'm not sure we should be guided by such > opinions, though: it would be nice to meet the expectations of the > uninformed masses, but given the choice of their expectations, which > are often internally inconsistent, and the expectations of those who > will actually be modifying or distributing code, I'd rather satisfy > the latter. I think you present a false dichotomy here -- there's no reason we can't come up with sane definitions of user, and apply them consistently for DFSG-compatibility rulings. > In particular, it seems to me that drawing a technical distinction > among users (i.e., to say that users at a console or over an IP > network are users who get source, but users via sneakernet or over a > voice telephone link are not) is unwise. I think it makes a lot of sense, actually, if it makes the distinction we want to make, although it would be best to distinguish the technical cases with non-technical distinctions ("preferred form for modification" is a good example of this). > Oooh. Neat point. So if I access a site -- even just far enough to > try to authenticate myself and be refused, then use that refusal in > some computation -- I can demand access to the source. That's no > good. This very quickly hits the case where "If you make it available > to anyone, you must make it available to everyone," which I think we > all agree is not acceptable. It actually turns out that the current AGPL does the right thing in this specific case. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 "On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock." -Thomas Jefferson