Affero GPL. Big loophole?
Steve Lhomme
steve.lhomme at free.fr
Thu Mar 21 09:56:44 UTC 2002
En réponse à Forrest J Cavalier III <forrest at mibsoftware.com>:
> "Free Software Foundation Announces Support of the Affero General
> Public License, the First Copyleft License for Web Services"
>
> http://www.fsf.org/press/2002-03-19-Affero.html
>
> (NOTE: The FSF suggests comments to them. I CC'ed them, but
> I'd prefer discussion in a forum. license-discuss seems
> appropriate.)
>
> Please, someone tell me how I am misreading the added clause
> 2(d).
>
> Where are the teeth? In my reading, the essence of the interesting
> part of clause 2(d) is
> "must offer an ... opportunity ... to request
> immediate transmission ... of the complete source code."
>
> I find it _extremely_ odd that it does not compel transmission.
> (Other GPL terms are clear that you must supply source code. This
> clause is different. Why?)
>
> If compelling the transmission is the goal, why is the license
> clause only compelling the "offer of opportunity to request"?
>
> Is this on purpose? Why create a huge loophole when it could
> have been written clearly?
>
> As an exercise, could someone explain why the following response is
> _not_ compliant with 2(d)?
>
> int main(int argc,char **argv)
> {
> printf ("We received your request for the complete source
> code.\n");
> printf ("<BR>AGPL 2(d) does not obligate us to supply it when
> responding.\n");
> printf ("<BR>Have a nice day!\n");
> }
Because as the software is GPLed, you must supply the source code on request.
Now maybe the word immediate is not good in that case.
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
More information about the License-discuss
mailing list