Hello 1T3XT BVBA! Thanks for your quick reply. I don't think I expressed my question clearly, though; so I'll try again.
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:37 AM, 1T3XT info <[email protected]> wrote: > Brett Neumeier wrote: > It is. You can't write closed source software on top of an AGPL > software. If you use iText in a web application, your application is > linked with iText; therefore your code should also be AGPL. A couple of points. First, there is certainly some application code that is linked with iText, but that is not necessarily the entire application system. Suppose that I write a Java program that takes its standard input as a series of commands that are passed to a cluster of iText objects. In that case, that Java program is a "work based on" the iText program, and it is therefore a "covered work" as defined in section 0. However, if I have a web application that spawns a copy of that program and passes commands to it via standard input, I do not believe that the web application becomes a "covered work." Do you believe it does? If so, can you point me to the sections of the AGPL that say so? Second, section 13 -- which is the only section I see that talks about users interacting with the program over a network -- doesn't talk about covered works. It talks about "modified versions" of the Program. I don't see anything in the AGPL that equates "covered works" and "modified versions." The closest thing I see is the definition of "modify", which says that anything that requires copyright permission other than making an exact copy is a "modification" -- and therefore, the act of compiling the iText source code into class files is a "modification". That strikes me as very strange, since I do not think of compilation as a kind of modification, but okay. > Not only AGPL is as viral as GPL, it also solves the SaaS loophole: > the GPL only talks about distributing the software, the AGPL is also > in effect when the software runs on a server. Yes, but the way that it does that is by having some text in the license. The only relevant text I have found in the license is section 13, which doesn't use the same language as over parts of the license. Section 13 uses phrases like "if you modify the Program, your modified version must..." while other sections of the license use phrases like "covered work." If section 13 was intended to apply to "covered works," why doesn't it use that term? > Moreover the AGPL allows the publisher of F/OSS to add additional > restrictions. If you download iText, you also accept (see the > LICENSE.txt file shipped with the source code): It looks to me as though the AGPL allows the publisher to add some types of restrictions -- there is a list of six kinds of restrictions enumerated in section 7. What is the text in AGPL that allows any other sort of restriction to be added? I think perhaps the LICENSE.txt file describes an /exception to/ the AGPL, as opposed to being a restriction that is specifically allowed by the AGPL. > That's only a snippet of the complete license, isn't it? > When you accept AGPL'ed software, you accept the whole license, > not just the snippets you like ;-) Yes, absolutely!! My question, in my previous email and in this one, is: what is the text in the AGPL that causes it to operate in the way that you assert that it does? I am hoping that someone will be willing and able to answer that question. Cheers, Brett -- Brett Neumeier ([email protected]) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace, Predictive Self Healing and Award Winning ZFS. Get Solaris 10 NOW http://p.sf.net/sfu/solaris-dev2dev _______________________________________________ iText-questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.1t3xt.com/docs/book.php Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
