User: l984

licenses may control only the distrubution

On: Software Licenses Get Worse

As I understand the main difference between
software and physical goods is a relative ease
of DISTRIBUTION. And the licenses were invented
to take control over this.

Therefore DISTRIBUTION must be the ONLY subject
licenses may limit our use of software.

Any other items in the licenses must be illegal.

This approach clears the view to restrictions
like 'reselling/giving_away the license',
'reverse ingeneering', 'product reviews' and
many others.

One thing remains unlear, though. I speak of
DISTRIBUTION, but it is not quite clear what
it means. Does 'fork()' produce another copy
of the program? Who is the user --- system
administrator sitting before the console,
client connected via network, CPU performing
machine code of the program, the running
process, the running thread, disk space
occupied by installed program. Most people will
probably say: "the box, software is installed
on". But then I recollect that clusters exist.

Anyway, the DISTRIBUTION must be the only item
software owners should be allowed to regulate.