Russell Nelson wrote, in part. > 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
The details of each license are important. How can we decide that a license would not be approved without the actual license? Such clauses are not clear OSD conflicts because there are already OSI approved licenses with similar clauses. The GPL 2c requires a run-time note under certain conditions. The OSI-approved the W3C license which has a requirement of displaying a notice to users. (Let's be clear, as I read it, that clause is not simply requiring a notice with a distributed copy. I think it catches ASPs.) The W3C is not copyleft. But what if it were.....? How do those clauses differ from what Richard is discussing? -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
