restrictions on web service linking?

[Wilson, Andrew]

Clark C. Evans wrote:  

> This "proprietary platform" category of free rider is particularly
> important from a moral perspective.  The value of one's database (or
> more generally, programming language or operating system) depends upon
> the software which is available on those platforms.  By writing
software
> which is then easily ported to those platforms, one quite directly
supports
> proprietary platforms without reasonable "return" to the community.

This is a useful clarification, but one that still makes clear your
intent is to craft a license which is not open source by definition,
e.g., a
license that prevents usage of the code with a non-free database.

You /could/ apply GPL, or other copyleft license, to your database.
Although GPL, LGPL, OSL, etc., were originally written with code rather
than data in mind, I think they would still do the job of preventing
people from making proprietary copies of covered data.  Another choice
would be to apply a Creative Commons share-alike license to your
database. However, I honestly doubt you would
have much success convincing this list that a /software/ license which
mandates 
sharing of all data accessed by or created by the covered software 
is an open source license.  Too discriminatory.

Andy Wilson
Intel Open Source Technology Center