Hoping to find a compliant alternative to the AGPL

[Gregor Richards]

The Affero General Public License has issues that puts it on shaky
ground as per OSI compliance, and, furthermore, has two loopholes (in my
interpretation).  I'm trying to craft a license that will have the same
effect on web programs, but
A) Not hinder non-web programs or non-web variations of web programs in
any way.
B) Not refer to "computer networks" or require "HTTP" in particular.
C) Hopefully eliminate the loopholes ... hopefully.

I'm concurrently having a long discussion on debian-legal to talk about
DFSG compliance.  After much discussion there, I have completely
rewritten it :)

This license is the GNU General Public License plus one additional
clause, included at the bottom of this message (such modification is
allowed according to the GPL FAQ, so long as the new license removes the
preamble and changes the name).

The reason I'm now mailing this list is to ask about its OSI compliance.
 I realize that the Open Source Definition is based on the DFSG,
however, they are different, and are quite often applied in different
ways.

The main issue being brought up on debian-legal is "the dissident test",
which seems like it would apply to the OSD as well.  I'm not entirely
convinced that the dissident test fails with this.  Any opinions are
greatly appreciated.

This new clause would of course only come in to effect if the program
produced and distributed output which was under this license, since
otherwise this license is irrelevent.  Since many web-based programs
copy large portions of themselves into the output, this should apply to
the entire class of programs that I intend for it to cover.

The new clause is:

  4. If you provide to a person or persons a means of accessing an
interactive interface to the Program which does not include access to
the source code, object code or executable, you must also provide to
that person or those persons (henceforth called "Indirect Users") access
to the complete source code of the Program in one of the following ways:

    a) Cause the Program to provide its source code in said interactive
    interface upon the request of an Indirect User; or,

    b) Make a means of immediate retrieval of the Program's source code
    easily visible to all Indirect Users; or,

    c) Provide a written offer, easily visible to all Indirect Users and
    valid for at least three years, to give to 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.
-- 
  Gregor Richards
  grichards at ml1.net

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