Richard Stallman writes: > I think these issues should be judged by the substance of the > requirement rather than by the legal hook which is used to impose it. > For instance, a requirement to make source available to users is > substantively a requirement of distribution rather than a restriction > on use. > > At present we are planning to try to handle the ASP problem in the GPL > through a limitation on a certain kind of modification--that you can't > delete or disable a command that lets the user download source (if the > program has one to start with). Lawyers we have consulted think that > will work.
I doubt we would approve such a license. We refused to approve Larry McVoy's Bitkeeper License precisely because it had a limitation on a certain kind of modification. The public version of Bitkeeper had a license term that didn't let you remove or modify a module which forced you to publish all modifications on a public bitkeeper server. If you didn't want to do that, you would have to license the code. -- -russ nelson http://russnelson.com | Crypto without a threat Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | model is like cookies 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | without milk. Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
