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

[Barry Fitzgerald]

James Michael DuPont wrote:
> 
> > product.  I could, theoretically, do it with a
> > wrapper.  That wrapper
> > could link the function and then output it's result
> > to STDIO -- and
> > thus, give me access to the output of the function
> > very similarly to the
> > way that XML-RPC does so.  The difference here is
> > that that output by
> > that wrapper is not being served over a network and
> > thus, the GNU GPL
> > applies.
> 
> So lets say I put all the questions into a file,
> run the GPled program and pick up all the answers?
> 
> The issue that I stated with the swagkit and the cppx
> is just that, a file format for the asts. The
> university of waterloo does not publish the source
> code for those tools, and there is an entire group of
> universities that are working on tools based around
> the GXL file format that produces non-free software.
> Some may have bits and bobs that are open source but
> they feel no obligation to publish the programs that
> use the gcc.
> 


I don't know enough about the swagkit to comment on that, but I can say
that I don't think that licenses should extend to output unless that
output is representational of something else that is copyrighted (like
the AST's)...

We just can't limit the manipulation of data to the license.  Extending
that would be horrible ground to come upon because the counter-example
of it is very dangerous.

Imagine a Microsoft Word license that read "Every document that you
create is applicable to this license and can only be usable by products
licensed to you by Microsoft."

It would be a scandle, and rightfully so.  That's the door that we would
open at that point.  And it's not somewhere that we should go.  The
output generated is usable by whoever is using it.  And that is the way
that it should be.  That is the last right that people have.  If we
could legally defend a strategy based on limiting that, we would destroy
the Free Software movement in the process.

Make no mistake about this - Freedom 0 is sacred.

        -Barry