On 04/10/2013 11:49 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:
On 09/04/13 04:30, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 09:38:26AM +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
>> I think one question about whether you can even have a rules-based
>> approach depends on whether there are bright lines you can draw along.
>> The speed of a vehicle (at speeds a long way from the speed of light :-)
>> is an ascertainable fact; challenges to prosecutions often arise based
>> on the quality or otherwise of that ascertaining, but it is a fact.
>> Similarly, the concept of "file" is still with us in computing and so
an
>> MPL file-level copyleft can be rules-based.
>>
>> If a strong copyleft is to be rules-based, where are the bright lines?
>> Are we not back at the argument about where the boundaries of an
>> application lie?
>
> Maybe you could combine the two approaches somehow.
>
> Ordinarily you'd have rules-based weak copyleft, but the developer can
> take some affirmative step to change the effect to standards-based
> strong copyleft.
That sounds like two-licenses-in-one, with all the issues of how you
combine code under one with code under the other, how wide the scope of
the "mark" of the affirmative step is, and so on.
Yeah, good points.
But my point was not about weak vs. strong (as I'm assuming that
copyleft-next is aiming for "strong"), it was about rules-based strong
vs. standards-based strong. I'm saying that rules-based strong is only
possible if you have bright lines to draw the rules along, as it were.
Do such lines exist?
Probably not in general (as opposed to something project-specific),
but I hope anyone who thinks otherwise will speak up. :-)
- RF