"Publish your source to publish your paper" exception to GPL3. Would it be legal ? Would it be ethic ?

Antonello Lobianco (not reply) blackhole at lobianco.org
Wed Sep 30 14:40:14 UTC 2015


Sorry, I forgot.. the motivation in not only the ethic of the software
itself.. is that too often (at least in my sector, forest economics but
economics in general as well) you see "results" arising from some sort of
models that are described more or less in detail in the paper, but which
software implementation is not available to really check the assumptions
and the logic of the model..
I think it's a shame of the sector..

On 30 September 2015 at 16:33, Antonello Lobianco (not reply) <
blackhole at lobianco.org> wrote:

> While in the traditional software production sector the private (economic)
> driver to use an existing software is those of modifying it and licensing
> the modified software, in the academic context the economic/private driver
> to modify a software is rather to use it to publish papers.
>
> As it is unethical that you use a GPL software, modify it and pursuit your
> private interest licensing it keeping your modifications as closed source,
> I feel unethical that in the academic sector you can use GPL software, make
> modifications for your own private interest (making publications) and not
> give them back to the community.
>
> I hence proposed for my software a sort of academic licence that state as
> follow. Please consider that I still let people to use the software for
> whatever scope they want, just to release the code they derive from it if
> they make publications with it.
>
> This software is covered by the above GNU GPL version 3 licence with the
>> following exceptions that prevail over the GNU GPL version:
>>
>> #1: Any public communication (not limited: working papers, articles,
>> technical reports) of results derived from running a modified version of
>> this software requires the publication of the source code corresponding to
>> such modifications;
>> #2: Publishing communications derived from unmodified versions of the
>> software on which new data is applied doesn't require the publication of
>> the data;
>> #3: Any modifications must be released under the same licence of the
>> unmodified software, including these exceptions.
>> GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
>> Version 3, 29 June 2007
>>
> [...etc..]
>
>
> Would such licence be legal (and would still allow the usage of GPL
> components) ?
> Would it be "ethic" (and would still be considered "free software") ?
>
> Regards,
>   Antonello
>
>
> --
> Antonello Lobianco
>



-- 
Antonello Lobianco
Spedito da un indirizzo non presenziato - Sent from an unattended account
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