Re: What is the "open web" ?

On 6/5/2013 7:42 AM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> On 6/5/13, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>> EME, for example, might not be implementable in GPLv3.  But I wasn't
>> aware that it was not implementable in other open source licenses such
>> as Apache or MPL (or even GPLv2 for that matter).  What am I missing?
> The distinction between an implementation coming with a license
> document that is generally accepted as an open source license, and the
> distribution terms as a whole (as arising from combination of that
> legal document with other relevant realities of the legal system in a
> given jurisdiction, such as whether relevant patent claims exist for
> which no free license is available, whether there are restrictions
> arising from the DMCA or similar legislation) complying with the open
> source definition [1] or the Free Software definition [2] (the two are
> equivalent for most practical purposes, including the current
> discussion).
> [1] http://opensource.org/osd.
> [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

I'm still confused.

Are you saying that the open source definition can provide limitations 
on MPL and Apache that are not inherent in the MPL or Apache licenses?

>
> Unless patents or DMCA-like legislation gets in the way, any software
> for which source code is made available and a release from copyright
> restrcitions is made under a open source licenses / free software
> license, is actually open source software / free software.
>
> The goal of the GPL is that it is intended to protect freedoms of
> software users from those situations where the author of the source
> code puts it under a free license, but in spite of that action, the
> software doesn't actually end up being free software.from the end
> user's perspective.
>
> GPLv2 did this well for many years, but eventually some problem
> mechanisms emerged that were not addressed by GPLv2. For example GPLv2
> fails to be incompatible with situations where the DMCA prevents
> software changes. This is fixed in GPLv3. (GPLv3 might be doing a bit
> of overkill there, but I'm not going to go into that discussion.)
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> FreedomHTML.org

Received on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 11:48:56 UTC