Must publish vs. must supply

[Chris F Clark]

In replying to:
>       Is a must-supply (to copyright holder, that is) clause
>       preferable over a must-publish (to the public, that is)
>       clause, or vice versa.

Mark Rafn wrote:

> Neither qualify as acceptible in my book.  I'd be interested to hear 
> from OSI board members whether this is an area where "free" as commonly 
> used by the FSF and Debian differs from "open source" as used by OSI.

Actually, as I understand it a must-xxx clause is closer to the
definition of free-software than to "open source".  It is the GPL
which established the viral nature, if you include free software in
your program, you must provide it to your customers.  The point of
must-xxx clauses is to close a loophole where downstream authors can
use the software in such a way that the effect is that it becomes
closed source (un-free).

If I write a piece of software and give it away under an open source
or free software license, it is disturbing and offensive to discover
that the software is used "internally" by a corporation to proprietary
advantage, while the clients of that corporation (who are not be
recipients of the software, since the use was "internal" to the
corporation) are deprived of access to that derived work.

A previous discussion on this topic posited the case where the
software was incorporated into a web-server.  Now, the actual server
is not shipped to clients, only the pages it serves.  This means that
web servers can be used to close/make un-free previously open source
software.  The developer of the web server does not need to share his
enhancements of the software with anyone.  

A must-xxx clause levels the playing field by eliminating this
loophole.  The web server author must publish his enhancements just
the same as a person delivering the software on cd.

-Chris Clark
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3