Re: My Favorite soapbox : XML linkage (was Re: [DotGNU]Jabber-thon)

[David Sugar]

This is in some ways a hard philosophical question.  Usually the GPL 
becomes involved (invoked, if you will) thru the act of distribution, 
and in web services, unlike with traditional linking, there is no 
"distribution" of a copyrighted work (code) one can point to and say, 
"aha", the GPL easily applies here.  The question of regulating what 
programs can invoke a web service is also interesting.  In a more 
traditional and older RPC system, IDL might have to be interchanged, and 
the IDL code/specfile itself could be under the GPL, thereby giving the 
ability to apply the GPL to other programs that invoke the RPC service 
if the author wishes.  In web services, neither code nor interface specs 
are   propagated (distributed), so it would seem to require some other 
means to even try to apply the GPL.

The question of if proprietary programs could talk to subunits or 
components of free software and form a complete system or work that has 
become defacto proprietary because parts of it now are is an important 
one.  In that, I see it can be a bad thing potentially.  But the result 
would perhaps be no worse than the LGPL, which itself is a pragmatic 
compromise, since the original components that were freely licensed 
would remain so individually and their freedom remains intact, like 
happens with LGPL libraries that are linked with proprietary binaries. 
Having well defined interfaces anchored in free software being invoked 
by proprietary software components means that free software substitutes 
could probably also be created by the community for the now well defined 
and isolated proprietary components given time and motivation.

Richard Stallman wrote:

>    What if we want to create web services that can only
>    be used by GPLed programs? 
>
> In general, if you have implented just an arbitrary web service, I
> don't think there is any way to impose such a requirement.  Perhaps
> you could require each user to sign a contract promising to use only
> GPL-covered software to access the system.  I have a bad feeling about
> the idea of a web site's trying to restrict what software users can
> access it with, though.
>
> In some cases, if the web service in question consists of talking in
> an intimate way with some GPL-covered server software, we might try to
> argue that the client side and the server are really one program and
> the GPL applies to the client.  However, in that situation it would
> be rather hard for that argument to prevail.
>
> It seems to follow that if DotGNU programs use Jabber in a
> straightforward way to communicate with each other, non-free programs
> will easily be able to talk with them.  Is that a bad thing?
> I am not certain.
>
>    We still need to be rethink the entire licensing issue
>    for the creation of the GPL "viral" effect on the
>    greater level. 
>
> Please don't compare the GPL with a virus.
> It is misleading, and it is very unfriendly.
>
>
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