On 20/11/2007, Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What if the application on top of the stack is just a thin broker layer > and any useful functionality is hidden in a backend that never > *directly* interacts with public users "remotely through a computer > network"?
Apologies for "triple-posting" on this thread, but another thought occurs to me concerning this issue of "interaction", and how we determine whether a program can be said to "support interaction remotely through a computer network". Namely, for a program to be said to "support interaction" in the manner envisaged by the AGPL, it must at minimum be capable of providing access to the source for remote users. So to use an example that I'm most familiar with, if you have a Wordpress installation running on top of a LAMP stack then neither Linux, Apache, MySQL nor PHP is itself capable of providing access to its source for remote users. Each would need the application sitting on top - Wordpress - to provide that functionality. So I'd say that's an indication that they are not "supporting interaction with remote users" in the manner envisaged by the AGPL. Wordpress itself, however, *is* capable of providing such access, so if Wordpress were licensed under AGPL then modifications to the Wordpress code would need to be made available under clause 13. Of course, that still leaves the potential problem of circumventing the AGPL by putting a non-free wrapper around the AGPLed application, but it's difficult to see how that could be avoided. A determined Evildoer can always find ways to comply with the letter of free software licences while avoiding the spirit. Finally, I'm conscious this is all a bit theoretical at the moment. Are there any definite proposals to include AGPLed software (e.g. Affero itself) in Debian, and if so how have these proposals been received by the DDs? John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
