Rick, My question is rather straight-forward. Does the GPLv3 permit the distribution of derived works that require an independent and non-free work for its operation [1]. I was under the impression that the Corresponding Source ("all the source code needed to... run the object code") and 5c ("the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged") would effectively prevent this sort of distribution. However, this seems not to be the case.
If so, and this seems to be the consensus I'm hearing, then I think the GPLv3 is ineffective; more of a nuance than effectively protecting the free commons. Since, if I wish to distribute an extension of GPL'd work, all I have to do is factor out the critical parts of the my work and make them available as an independent and proprietary web service. On Fri, Dec 23, 2011, at 03:52 AM, Rick Moen wrote: > I doubt very much that the recent queries here qualify as > that variety of public service. You are being unnecessarily argumentative. I'm trying to find an appropriate licensing strategy for our company, and I'm expressly trying to prevent and understand the sort of shims that seem to be standard industry practice. If our work can't be protected from these "creative circumventions" by the GPL, then we probably won't use this license. It's my position that if you wish to create a derived work that incorporates proprietary functionality, you should also provide an equivalent implementation under a compatible license. The style of linking and the question if the combined work is also derived from the proprietary work are largely irrelevant in my estimation. Yet, these two considerations keep emerging as if they are limitations of the GPL. Part of this problem is legal, but the other part is what the community accepts as being acceptable and that depends upon the public opinion of legal and technical professionals on this list. Best, Clark [1] For purposes of this question, you can consider the dependency to be declared as part of the derived work, but resolved at runtime via sockets or WebAPI; also assume that the derived work is *not* a modification or transformation of the independent, non-free work. _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss