Licensing and public performance

[David Johnson]

On Mon, 03 Apr 2000, Andrew J Bromage wrote:

> I'd like to prevent this, but also, obviously, I'd prefer not to
> trample on fair use.  I suspect that the answer lies in restricting
> "public performance".  So let me ask the lawyers and non-lawyers:

I would be very leery of basing terms upon "public performance" without
clearly defining what a public performance is. 

If it means you can restrict the normal manner in which one uses the
program, you've just violated the first definition of Free Software. On
the other hand, if the public performance in question is not the normal
use, you can get away with it.

But I think that it's a moot point. If your intended users won't
distribute their modifications anyway, creating a new license won't
help matters any. You might want to go a split-licensing route. Have an
OSD license that demands they play nice (the kindergarten teacher
license), or charge them good money for a license that lets them keep
their modifications secret (the tanstaafl license).

-- 
David Johnson...
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