On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:10:24PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: > If you make the software or a work based on the software available for > direct use by another party, without actually distributing the software > to that party, you must either: > > a) Distribute the complete corresponding machine-readable source code > publically under this license, or > b) Make the source code available to that party, under the all the same > conditions you would need to meet in GPL section 3 if you were > distributing a binary to that party.
Consider the general case: if my entire system was under this license, then my small web page (serving a few small files at my 30k/sec) would require me to put the source to Apache, glibc, openssl, and the other dependencies (and possibly the kernel, depending where you draw the line). If I was on a modem doing the same thing--which many people do--then even making only the Apache source available to anyone who has access to the page (at 5k/sec) is a huge cost. (Each person downloading would tie up the line for a long time.) The costs of sending source code are generally comparable to the costs of sending binaries; but the costs of sending source are, in many cases, orders of magnitude greater than the costs of "making it available for use". I seem to recall other, more specific cases showing related problems (where the cost transmitting on some media was on the order of pennies per sentence), but I can't recall them, or which discussion it came up in. Anyone remember? -- Glenn Maynard
