OVPL & "Otherwise Make Available" (was RE: Change ot topic,back to OVPL)

[Chuck Swiger]

[ I agreed with Larry's email about Jane Random User and Joe Friendly Stranger, 
who I would like to warmly welcome to the mailing list. :-) ]

Alex Bligh wrote:
> --On 26 August 2005 11:08 -0700 Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>>> Is making the output of a program publicly available
>>> "external deployment"?
>>
>> In OSL, no.
[ ...trimmed for brevities' sake... ]
> I must admit I don't (or rather I don't see that the answer to the first
> is necessarily no). If you make the output of a program available (whether
> publicly or not) to third parties *in response to their to requests it
> be run*, that seems to me to be External deployment as it is:
> 
> "... use ... of the ... Works .. in such away that the ... works may be
> used by anyone other than You."
> 
> I would construe the wording therein quite widely - for instance I think
> it would cover making publicly available an FTP server whose code was
> licensed under the OVPL.

Where do you draw the line?

If I were to run a mail server under either the OSL or the OVPL, which is 
publicly accessible via SMTP, could I make private changes to the software 
without suffering an obligation to publish those changes?

Would I be obliged to put a tarball of the FTP software itself on every FTP 
server I run?

Would I have to publish my config files, or the security database itself, to 
anyone who asks, simply because those are derivative works?

I am much happier with the way Apache v2 defines this:

> "Derivative Works" shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object form,
> that is based on (or derived from) the Work and for which the editorial
> revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a
> whole, an original work of authorship. For the purposes of this License,
> Derivative Works shall not include works that remain separable from, or
> merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of, the Work and Derivative
> Works thereof.

If I distribute my content, whether that be static HTML or dynamic programs 
running via CGI-BIN, those are seperate works which do not form a derivative 
work.  The Apache license isn't copyleft, but if it were, simply running Apache 
and serving my own content up wouldn't trigger an obligation to make source 
available.

I don't think that relaying mail, or serving FTP files, reasonably constitutes 
a distribution of the SMTP or FTP software itself.  The mail message or the 
file you get via FTP is seperate and independent.

-- 
-Chuck