[License-discuss] OSI definition

[Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz]

There is, of course, a contradiction with OSD "non-discrimination"
principles here, but, as a - very occasional - License Discuss contributor,
I would like to highlight another point that is present in a lot of
contributions (and could be submitted as a question to nearly all license
steward candidates.

They say "use the code"
Or they require (Open Innovation License, recently) that the license must
be provided for any *Project*, defined as what is *using* this license”.

But what is "Using" (apart from private use that is never a distribution) ?
- Is it the “normal use”, according to documentation or instruction notice,
in the framework of a project, the covered software being distributed “as
is” or even modified as one of the components of the project distribution?
- Is it the use of the covered software "as a tool", for generating other
software components of the project (even if your software itself will not
be distributed, the distributed components will integer some code generated
by your software, as resulting from the normal use of your software)?
- Is it the "integration" of the covered software in a combined work, where
the integrator has copied/reproduced the code of the data structures / the
APIs of the covered software in its own code, in order to make the covered
software interoperable with other components present in the project or with
its own software, so all components of the project are distributed after
being integrated (i.e. through some hard-coded static linking, based on
interoperable APIs)?
- Is it the reproduction or merging of  functional copyrighted software
code in some project components, making the project a derivative of your
software?
- Etc. (i.e. distribution "as a service"...

Most of the users' questions received in a legal support service like
Joinup.eu are about this ambiguous notion of "using" software.

Le lun. 18 janv. 2021 à 02:24, Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us> a
écrit :

> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 8:13 PM Tenorgil <tenorgil at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Can you clarify this phrase
> >
> > You can basically do whatever you want, as long as you are not a company
> with shareholders employing lots of people
> >
> > What does it mean if “you” (presumably a person) is not a company (a
> legal concept). If all the employees of a company can use the code, what
> does it mean that the company can’t?
>
> It's not relevant. The employees are free to 'use the code' in their
> individual capacities, but the company cannot. For example the company
> cannot 'use the code' on its internal computer systems, which are
> owned by the company and not the employees. Also the company cannot
> 'use the code' in its products, which are products of the company and
> not its employees. Those employees, when acting on behalf of the
> company (doing their jobs) are agents of the company, not individuals,
> and the license terms apply to the company.
>
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-- 
Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz
pe.schmitz at gmail.com
tel. + 32 478 50 40 65
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