restrictions on web service linking?

[David Dillard]

I understand your concern.  However I don't believe you can restrict
usage the way you want to, whether that usage be public or private, and
meet the requirements of the OSD as it exists today.

It seems to me that what you may need to do is broach the subject of
changing the OSD to include provisions for freedom of data as well as
freedom of source code.


--- David



-----Original Message-----
From: Clark C. Evans [mailto:cce at clarkevans.com] 
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 2:25 PM
To: David Dillard
Cc: Clark C. Evans; License Discuss
Subject: Re: restrictions on web service linking?

David,

Thank you for the constructive feedback.  My wording is clumsy and my
intent is being informed by this discussion.  I intend for the
restriction discussed to only trigger upon External Deployment as found
in OSL v 3.0:

  The term "External Deployment" means the use, distribution, or
  communication of the Original Work or Derivative Works in any way
  such that the Original Work or Derivative Works may be used by anyone
  other than You, whether those works are distributed or communicated
  to those persons or made available as an application intended for
  use over a network.

In particular, I'm not concerned with "private usage".  I'm concerned
with public usage of my application on a proprietary database, one which
prevents users of the combined system from obtaining their own copy for
their personal use.

On Mon, Nov 20, 2006 at 01:33:26PM -0500, David Dillard wrote:
| > I see the External Deployment (see OSL v3.0) of my application in a 
| > manner with which it is configured to depend upon a proprietary 
| > database system (such as Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server) for its 
| > operation as problematic, and I would like to prevent it 
| > accordingly.
| 
| This can be viewed as potentially violating a several items in OSD:
| 
| 3. Derived works: If someone cannot modify the software to work with 
| any of the proprietary DBs you named, you've restricted the ability to

| create derived works.
|
| 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: You are discriminating

| against those that wish to use proprietary software in combination 
| with your software.
|
| And arguably:
| 
| 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software: You are preventing, via 
| license, other software from being used with your software.  
| Admittedly, the description here goes into other software distributed 
| with the open source software, but I strongly suspect the intent was 
| not to limit it to just that software, as the rationale section 
| alludes to.  It says that "Distributors of open-source software have 
| the right to make their own choices about their own software."  I 
| think we can all agree that should apply to users of open source
software as well.

I hope the above declaration addresses these concerns.  It is not what I
was originally proposing, but it is now.  I concede, in the tradition of
the GPL, that an open source license should not restrict the private
usage of that software or other software components.  The issue at hand
is public distribution and performance of derived works which are
dependent upon proprietary code.

Thank you once again,

Clark