What exactly is "redistribution?"

[zachleat]

According to the BSD license, redistribution and use are permitted
given three stipulations are true.  However, the first two
stipulations only refer to redistribution and none of the three refer
to use.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

Last week I found some of Yahoo's CSS source code being used on
Google's Personalized Homepage.

http://www.zachleat.com/web/2007/04/05/google-using-yui-grids-css/

Some have argued that Google doesn't need to attribute the source to
Yahoo, because the BSD license with which Yahoo has released the code
only restricts redistribution and not basic use.  This would seem to
make the most sense.

My question is, what is the difference between distribution and use in
a web environment?  Because the files are hosted in their application,
they are not really redistributing the code as a whole, just 4 or 5
lines of it.  Just for my curiosity...

Thanks, Zach

[Matthew Flaschen]

Zach Leatherman wrote:
> My question is, what is the difference between distribution and use in
> a web environment?

IANAL, but if you provide the code for someone else's computer to
run/parse (e.g. Javascript, CSS, Java applets, whatever), I think that's
clearly distribution.

> Because the files are hosted in their application,
> they are not really redistributing the code as a whole, just 4 or 5
> lines of it.

If that's the only client-side code they're using, they probably have
nothing to worry about.  It's likely to be fair use, though certainly
distasteful and a violation of the license.

Matthew Flaschen

[Chuck Swiger]

On Apr 13, 2007, at 2:45 PM, Zach Leatherman wrote:
> According to the BSD license, redistribution and use are permitted
> given three stipulations are true.  However, the first two
> stipulations only refer to redistribution and none of the three refer
> to use.

True.  It's not actually clear that a license can restrict whether  
and how you choose to use software which you've obtained-- that seems  
to require a contract, but YMMV.

> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php
>
> Last week I found some of Yahoo's CSS source code being used on
> Google's Personalized Homepage.
>
> http://www.zachleat.com/web/2007/04/05/google-using-yui-grids-css/
>
> Some have argued that Google doesn't need to attribute the source to
> Yahoo, because the BSD license with which Yahoo has released the code
> only restricts redistribution and not basic use.  This would seem to
> make the most sense.

If Google redistributes the software from Yahoo, they would need to  
keep the BSD license intact, along with any copyright statements and  
so forth.  It is certainly arguable that providing the CSS code on a  
website constitutes redistribution, but it also seems like someone  
from Google is going to fix the missing license/copyright.

> My question is, what is the difference between distribution and use in
> a web environment?  Because the files are hosted in their application,
> they are not really redistributing the code as a whole, just 4 or 5
> lines of it.  Just for my curiosity...

It's probably likely that 4-5 lines of publicly released code are not  
significant enough to merit copyright protection or constitute a  
"meaningful taking" according to copyright law...but the question of  
distribution vs. use for an ASP or web-based program is an issue  
which is not clearly resolved with regard to the BSD, or at least I  
don't believe it is.  Some other licenses have attempted to clarify  
what they mean under such circumstances (cf GPLv3, Academic Free  
License, etc).

--
-Chuck

[Chris DiBona]

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Traditionally (I am the one answered on your blog) the majority of open source licenses (and open source developers) do not consider web performance to be distribution, but honestly, for something like this I feel better attaching the copyright (but I do not feel the same way about GPL covered code, as it explicitly defines distribution and does not include web performance in that definition)

In that particular case, it was an employee not clear on our internal tracking practices. That's been rectified and it should have been pushed out by now with a bracketing copyright notice so that our friends (and I mean that without irony, I like those folks very much) at Yahoo get some credit.

Additionally, we (google) often credit people when there is no reason in the license to do so. Sometimes we'll also put a bsd licensed credit in code.google.com so that we don't have to push out non-compressed copyright text millions of times a day. These are usually done after talking with the copyright holder and getting thier read.

I consider the licenses a good starting point, but knowing the developers can help a lot more.

Chris

On 4/13/07, Zach Leatherman <zachleatherman@...> wrote:

According to the BSD license, redistribution and use are permitted
given three stipulations are true.  However, the first two
stipulations only refer to redistribution and none of the three refer
to use.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

Last week I found some of Yahoo's CSS source code being used on
Google's Personalized Homepage.

http://www.zachleat.com/web/2007/04/05/google-using-yui-grids-css/

Some have argued that Google doesn't need to attribute the source to
Yahoo, because the BSD license with which Yahoo has released the code
only restricts redistribution and not basic use.  This would seem to
make the most sense.

My question is, what is the difference between distribution and use in
a web environment?  Because the files are hosted in their application,
they are not really redistributing the code as a whole, just 4 or 5
lines of it.  Just for my curiosity...

Thanks, Zach

--
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
Google's Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com
Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com