The Rails Wheels licencing system and Open Source

[Mark James]

John Cowan wrote:
> Mark James scripsit:
> 
>> John, this would only be the case if a requirement to check, and
>> perhaps pay, a licence fee is considered a form of use restriction.
> 
> It discriminates between lines of endeavor.  Charlie, who doesn't want
> to run a web site but just to grab your nifty CRM routines for use
> in his desktop product, gets to use the code cost-free, whereas Dave,
> who does want to run a website, has to pay.

Well an up-front compulsory payment doesn't restrict the ways
one can apply software, only what one needs to do before applying
that software in any way that one sees fit, unless you regard
unfettered re-distribution as application.

Yes it's semantics, and I suppose the intent of the OSI definition
is sufficiently clear, even though the words themselves could be
twisted.

And just to clarify, under the Rails Wheels system, Charlie gets
no licence, and must negotiate with the copyright holders.

>> The distribution licence makes the licence check "advertisement" viral.
> 
> There is no such thing as a directly viral contract.  A contract requires
> an offer and an acceptance between the offeror (that's you) and *each*
> acceptor, individually.  You can impose the restriction on an acceptor
> that he not transfer the code or copies of it without imposing the same
> restrictions on the transferee, to be sure.  But then your license no
> longer allows free distribution; it's a proprietary license.

I'm happy to call it a proprietary license as long as it does its
job in propagating agreement to the licence-check condition, even
though propagation of the software itself is unrestricted.

>> Are you saying that OSD #1 not only prevents restrictions on the
>> ability to give software away, but the manner in which software is
>> given away?
> 
> Certainly.  The term "free" in OSD #1 refers to liberty rather than price.

"Free" is in the clause title, but I don't think such liberty
is obviously implied by the clause text. But I'm not trying
to worm around it, and am happy to accept the broader meaning
and intent.

> _Specht_ established, at least for the U.S., that providing a direct link
> to the download and another link to the contract is not enough to create
> an offer-and-acceptance situation: people who directly download without
> looking at the contract aren't bound by the latter.  YMMV; IANAL.

I guess this is a problem for a lot of software that only employs
an embedded GPL licence file.

Mark