IPL as a burden

Russell Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Sat Jan 20 06:05:24 UTC 2001


Ian Lance Taylor writes:
 > I'm sorry, I was thinking that you were talking about using an open
 > source license, and then claiming license fees on top of that.  Now I
 > understand that you were just continuing your claim that requiring
 > license fees was compatible with open source.  That's interesting; I
 > don't see a clear statement in the OSD that recipients of a program be
 > permitted to run it.

None is needed.  If you have legally received a copy of a program (and
OSD #1 guarantees the right of the person giving you a copy to do so),
you are free to use it or not, as you wish.  Copyright law only
restricts copying.  You could only restrict the activities of a
*recipient* if you could require them to execute a license, but OSD #7
prohibits that.

-- 
-russ nelson <sig at russnelson.com>  http://russnelson.com
Crynwr sells support for free software  | PGPok | "This is Unix...
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | Stop acting so helpless."
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | +1 315 268 9201 FAX   | --Daniel J. Bernstein



More information about the License-discuss mailing list