Anthony Towns <[email protected]> writes: > This detailed wrangling is really missing the point that I'm interested > in, though. Is there a _fundamental_ difficulty with such licenses? > > "If you have created a modified version of the Work, and receive > a request by the Primary Copyright Holder, you must provide > a copy of your modifications as at the date of the request in > source form, at cost, to the Primary Copyright Holder."
This is certainly better than the QPL or the Affero thing. But it's not really good enough. It amounts to "you may not bury any secrets in this source code, no matter what", and I think that's a problem. Perhaps the "anarchist with coded messages" example is better here than the Chinese Dissident (thanks go to Don Armstrong for noting it). So the anarchist: are you saying that forced publication is really no big deal to him? It seems to me that saying that the anarchist is obligated to divulge his secrets as a consequence of using the software is an unnacceptible condition. Also, talking about this "only if requested" part is really a red herring, I think. I do understand the point behind it, but any suitably public announcement will count as a request; indeed, I could simply post spam requests and blather them across the net. Maybe I might miss once in a while, but this is so close to "you must divulge the source if you ever read a public network". Thomas
