Question on OSD #5

[Chris Travers]

On Dec 15, 2007 7:11 AM, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at linpro.no> wrote:

> "Chris Travers" <chris.travers at gmail.com> writes:
> > I have seen licenses which purport to require that anyone who modifies a
> > work send a patch back to the original developer.  If this is triggered
> on
> > any modification, then "private" modifications aren't so private
> anymore.
>
> I realize that YANAL, but is this even legal / enforcable?


Probably not enforcible, but I have seen licenses which claim to do this.
Maybe not legal too (could be copyright misuse).  However regardless, I
wouldn't consider either license to be "open" in any reasonable sense.

>
>
> > My own views are that forced distribution licenses such a the AGPL [...]
>
> I wouldn't call the AGPL a "forced distribution license"; it just
> takes a different view of what constitutes "distributing a binary"
> (which triggers the recipient's right to obtain the source).  I don't
> find that unreasonable in these Web 2.0 / SAAS days.


1)  Under copyright law is not interaction over a network is not restricted,
so this is not a matter of copying/distributing the software as a restricted
copyright matter.  The AGPL makes this requirement based on the right to
control modifications.  The OSL makes it as a contractual EULA-like term.
Both *do* force distribution of the work but they choose different
mechanisms to do this..

2)  Unreasonable or not, I think there are extremely good reasons to avoid
such licenses.  One of the real problems that you have is that it is more
problematic to push a single distribution point of security fixes for a
project when every demo (under the OSL, and every demo where configuration
files are modified under the AGPL) are required to distribute whatever
versions they are running (which may not be current).  Under the GPL you
cannot prevent people from distributing older versions with known security
issues, but it is a lot easier to encourage people to be responsible when
distribution is a choice.

Best WIshes,
Chris Travers


>
>
> DES
> --
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav
> Senior Software Developer
> Linpro AS - www.linpro.no
>
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