On 1/17/06, Anthony Towns <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > d) They may require that the work contain functioning facilities that > > > It's interesting that the word they've chosen is "contain", not "retain". > > Well, "retain" would imply I can't change it, which would be even worse. > > No, retain would just mean you couldn't remove it -- it's also what > the Affero GPL requires. "Contain" is stronger -- it means if it's not > already there, you have to add it. > > > > OTOH, at its absolute worst, it doesn't make GPLv3 stuff that doesn't make > > > use of that option non-free. > > I think you're the third person to say something along those lines: "be > > thankful, it could be a lot worse". > > I think you're underestimating just how bad some of us expected the > GPLv3 draft to be. :) > > > It's still endorsing an extremely > > onerous class of restriction, implying that it's acceptable, helpful, > > and that the classes of application screwed over by it is unimportant. > > It's discouraging that people are thankful that's "all it is" ... > > The Affero license came out in 2002, at which point flash cards cost > ~$1/MB; they now seem to cost around 6c/MB. Hard drives, bandwidth, > etc seem to be similarly better. How hard is it really to satisfy these > requirements?
It *requires* that you offer it, even when there is no network available. So I could take some modern GPL3 code with the restriction, then port it to the original Palm Pilot - and I would have to put a useless, even uncodable feature in it as required by the license. > > (The Affero licenses clause is: > > d) If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with > users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, > any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to > request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source > code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version > of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an > equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program > through a computer network to request immediate transmission by > HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other > derivative work. The affero clause seems to indicate that it only has to allow download if the program is designed to run over a network - but what if the network is down? The affero version is slightly better written than the GPLv3 provision. > > There was also an RPSL clause for similar purposes that was more problematic) Well the RPSL is non-free... Andrew -- Andrew Donnellan http://andrewdonnellan.com http://ajdlinux.blogspot.com Jabber - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------- Member of Linux Australia - http://linux.org.au Debian user - http://debian.org Get free rewards - http://ezyrewards.com/?id=23484 OpenNIC user - http://www.opennic.unrated.net
