For Approval: TURKIX PUBLIC LICENSE

[Emre Sokullu]

***
This new license, TPL resembles very much to GPL but it is designed for
internet based software that can be used as an internet service. It also
resembles to Affero Public License; moreover we are inspired of this
license and just added a new section "2.d" to GPL and modified the
header of it.

GPL may be well enough for protecting users' and developers' rights in
general. Because it ensures that the derived products' cannot change
their license, so may freely available as its ancestor product.

But GPL does not cover web based products that can also be used as an
internet service. I mean; what if the developer does not want that one
takes his product; and sells a web service based on this product (the
service based on this product can't be sold but may be freely available
for commercial or non-commercial usage). This is a special case and some
developers may concern about it.

Maybe I couldn't be very clear till now but here comes an example, this
should help you understand what i mean.

Take the example of phpBB. As the developer of phpBB, you may permit
that your product can be used by both commercial and non-commercial
foundations for supporting their clients. Forexample both Sun
Microsystems and Apache Software Foundation, as well as their purposes
are different in commercial sense, they can both use phpBB for
supporting their clients.

But you may stand against a general public service that uses your
software. Now have a look at  http://www.createphpbb.com/, you'll
understand what i mean. This is just one example, people take your
software and give it as a general service and make money out of this.
You may not want it. You may want to charge a license fee for such
usages; 

In our case, we have developed a web based control panel which provides
full control over apache2, bind9, mysql, pgsql, vsftpd, and qmail. I
want to cover it under an open license lie gpl. It can be used
individually by commercial or non-commercial organizations for easily
controlling their hosting services. But i want to charge a small fee for
those who will use it as a web hosting service publicly for more than
one individual.

For me, the problem that arises here is that whether this license should
prevent free web services that makes money out of things like Google
ads. For me there's no problem, but maybe the license should be more
strict and prevent this; however if one is not against this, can easily
soften this license (softening the rules is easy but hardening them is
almost impossible; so the license may prevent free web services also by
default)


***
This license is a derivative of GPL, so the aspect that I've mentioned
above will be almost similar with GPL. If a software is licensed under
TPL, the derivative works will also have to be licensed TPL.

This license is more strict than licenses like BSD, and MIT. In fact GPL
is also much more strict than BSD and MIT. GPL and our new license are
more conservative licenses for the developers' work. 

GPL is very suitable for multi-licensing issues. Take the example of
mysql. This is a very succesful dual-licensing example. 

For web applications such a case can only be possible with TPL, because
i think, GPL is not sufficent at this point.


***
Here goes the plain text version of our new license. You can find an
html version of it on http://tr.turkix.org/files/tpl.htm



TURKIX GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 1, November 2004

Copyright © 2004 Turkix.org
No 22/17, M Mazharbey Caddesi 81040 Selamicesme/Goztepe, ISTANBUL,
TURKEY

This license is a modified version of the GNU General Public License
copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. made with their
permission. Section 2(d) has been added to cover use of software by
internet based service providers.

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to
share and change it. By contrast, the Turkix General Public License is
intended to guarantee your freedom to be served from the Product. This
Public License applies to most of the internet based software. You can
apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.
This General Public License is designed to make sure that you have the
freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this
service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you
want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new
free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone
to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These
restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis
or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have.
You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code.
And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so
that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original
authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents.
We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will
individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program
proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must
be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under
the terms of this Affero General Public License. The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either
verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language.
(Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term
"modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running
the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is
covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program
(independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that
is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source
code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously
and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice
and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to
this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other
recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of
it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute
such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided
that you also meet all of these conditions:

* a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

* b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part
thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
under the terms of this License.

* c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when
run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in
the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an
appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or
else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may
redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user
how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is
interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work
based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

* d) You cannot take this Program directly or a modified version of it
(the Program), and sell this service. You cannot even show advertorial
programs on web pages using this Program, or showing a part of this
Program on one of its frames, inner frames. This means, you must offer
free service through internet for all users interacting with this
Program, or a derivated work. If you use this Program on any part of
your internet based service, you cannot claim bandwidth usage, hardware
requirements or any other thing as a reason for selling this service or
making profit of it somehow.

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and
can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on
the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this
License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire
whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
collective works based on the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a
storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the
scope of this License.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and
2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years,
to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of
physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable
copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms
of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
interchange; or,

* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only
for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in
object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with
Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code
means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control
compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special
exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is
normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major
components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on
which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the
executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access
to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy
the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source
code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source
along with the object code.

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise
to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will
automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties
who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will
not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in
full compliance.

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all
its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the
Program or works based on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions
on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not
responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute
so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and
any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not
distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would
not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who
receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you
could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from
distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the
integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented
by public license practices. Many people have made generous
contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that
system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to
the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute
software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that
choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be
a consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may
add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those
countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries
not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the
limitation as if written in the body of this License.

9. Turkix.org may publish revised and/or new versions of the TURKIX
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be
similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and
conditions either of that version or of any later version published by
Turkix.org. If the Program does not specify a version number of this
License, you may choose any version ever published by Turkix.org.

You may also choose to redistribute modified versions of this program
under any version of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public
License version 3 or higher, so long as that version of the GNU GPL
includes terms and conditions substantially equivalent to those of this
license.

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the
author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by
Turkix.org, write to us; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our
decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status
of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and
reuse of software generally.

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER
EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE
ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH
YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL
NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN
WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY
AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR
DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM
(INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED
INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF
THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR
OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.