Must publish vs. must supply

[John Cowan]

Abe Kornelis scripsit:

> The BXAPL (see http://www.bixoft.nl/english/license.htm)
> currently has both - which is definitely an overkill,
> even though it grants users the right to keep their
> modifications entirely private. That is: one either keeps
> all modifications private, or they are published to
> public in general. Selective distribution is not 
> allowed. Users who fail to comply are obligated to
> supply their modifications upon request.

As to "must publish", I think it's unnecessary.  Those who wish to keep
their mods private will do so whether the license allows it or not:
if they sit on the changed version of the software, no one will know
that it even exists.

The GPL and the OSL take what I consider to be a reasonable attitude:
you must supply changes in source form to people who have received
the changed version.   If the changed version is published to all, the
changes must also be; if the changed version is distributed to a few,
ditto the changes; if the changed version is never distributed, the
changed version need not be either.  Of course, the distributees may
themselves distribute, but at least there is no unlimited liability to
distribute one's changes to anyone who asks for them.

This is quite separate from the question of whether the change is
*licensed* to all.  No matter what the distribution conditions, anyone
who has possession of the change is licensed to use it.

The trouble with the usual kind of "must supply" (which I take to mean
"must supply changes to the original author") is the burden of doing so
for those who make small changes to a large number of works -- people
like Linux distro makers and *BSD groups.  If they have to push the
changes to the original author, the original author may be difficult
or impossible to find, or (if corporate) may have gone out of business.
It is much better, if you are going to require such a thing, to let the
distro creator push to you a distribution point (such as a Web site)
from which you may pull the changes yourself.

In general, though, I think all these requirements are over-cautious.
Most people do not want to maintain forks indefinitely -- they *want* to
push changes back to you in the hope that you will integrate the changes
into the mainline distribution, and they will get them back automatically.

-- 
"No, John.  I want formats that are actually       John Cowan
useful, rather than over-featured megaliths that   http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
address all questions by piling on ridiculous      http://www.reutershealth.com
internal links in forms which are hideously        jcowan at reutershealth.com
over-complex." --Simon St. Laurent on xml-dev
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3