[Labs-l] Questions regarding the Labs Terms of use

[Brad Jorsch (Anomie)]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Jeremy Baron <jeremy at tuxmachine.com>
wrote:

> On Mar 13, 2015 10:49 AM, "Ricordisamoa" <ricordisamoa at openmailbox.org>
> wrote:
> > What about tools and services made up of software themselves? Do they
> have to be Open Source?
>
> What are "tools and services made up of software themselves"? are there
> "tools and services" not made up of software?
>

Documentation only, maybe?


> On Mar 13, 2015 10:58 AM, "John" <phoenixoverride at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's debatable. Released under a free license vs publicly available.
>
> [citation needed]
>

I suspect the debatable bit was the question "Strictly speaking, do the
Terms of use require that all code be made available to the public?",
although it's unclear due to top-posting.

Yes, it clearly states that all software has to be under an Open Source
license. But I see no requirement that the software has to be publicly
released anywhere, although it would presumably be permissible under the
required Open Source license for anyone else with access to it on Labs to
publicly redistribute it.

I don't know whether the loophole of "I write something in C, put it under
a non-copyleft license,[1] then upload only the binaries to Labs" should be
closed. Others coming later would be free to redistribute those binaries
under the license, but lacking source it would be hard to make
modifications.

 [1]: One that doesn't require source availability, e.g. BSD or MIT

-- 
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
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