[License-discuss] Trigger for licensee obigations

[John Cowan]

On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 1:07 PM Bruce Perens via License-discuss <
license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> wrote:

IMO the right to sequester "private modifications" went obsolete as soon as
> there was SaaS. It's not in the OSD and I never considered it fundamental
> to Free Software or Open Source. To the extent that Richard Stallman
> believes it's a fundamental right, I think he's mistaken and needs to
> modify his policy.
>

I can't agree with you there.  It's the instantiation of Freedom One: "The
freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your
computing as you wish."  That includes changing it to incorporate your
secret sauce that you use so that you can manufacture widgets better and
more cheaply than anyone else, without being required to send those changes
to your competitors on demand.  It is the computer version of a trade
secret.


John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.  --Hal Abelson
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