Licence for Desktop Service Software ??

Alex Hudson home at alexhudson.com
Tue Dec 4 09:06:08 UTC 2007


On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 09:44 +0100, Antonello Lobianco wrote:
> Thanks for the reply.. I am not in the law domain but if I undestood correcty 
> you claim that a licence of the software like the GPL+clause of mandatory 
> redistribution of source code in case of redistribution of products/services 
> ("results") obtained with a modified version of the software woult it make 
> the software not only GPLv3 incompatible but also would make it not 
> being "free software" ?

Yeah. The AGPL is a special case, because it enforces distribution in a
scenario where users would never ordinarily have access to a copy of the
software. In the desktop software case, users would always have access
to a copy.

To tie the use of the software into forced redistribution would be an
invasion of privacy to my mind, e.g.:

	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIDemandACopy

> Which of the basic "freedoms" would it be broked ?

The right to use the software, for any purpose. We've never accepted
restrictions on that (before AGPL).

> I spent only few days in this matters, but I understood that a licence is 
> compatible when the additional code add a restriction (eg. LGPL->GPL) and is 
> uncompatible in the opposite case.. or am I going to simple ?? 

That's too simple.

The GPL says explicitly that you may not add further restrictions;
that's how the copyleft works. 

Licenses are only compatible if you can obey both of them
simultaneously. In the case of GPL and GPL+restriction, you wouldn't be
able to obey the original GPL, so they would be incompatible.

Cheers,

Alex.




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