[bhuber]

My interpretation of that clause is it applies to distributing code over a network. The most common example of this is serving javascript to a web browser. I'm pretty sure putting an API in front of a server that happens to run open source software doesn't count as "distribution", which is what we're talking about here with SAAS providers and Akka. If it does, then every site that is backed by servers running linux and not distributing their GPL license to clients is also in violation.

[svnpenn]

I would disagree with your assessment. OSL was specifically crafted, to close this exact loophole:

> Most other open source licenses treat such network uses of software as internal to the company that runs the server, and they don't require disclosure of source code. That is seen by many nowadays as a loophole that permits large online companies to avoid their reciprocal source code obligations.

http://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm#_Toc187293088

[bhuber]

Sorry, I didn't read your link carefully enough. I stand corrected, that does indeed seem to be the only reasonable interpretation. That said, this clause only exists in this particular OSL license, so it only applies to software distributed under it. Some quick googling indicates that OSL is 20 years old, and OSL v3 (the latest version), is 17. Despite that, it doesn't appear to have any significant usage. PyPi, for example, lists 10 software packages distributed under it [1], out of 387,658 total. So it certainly doesn't seem like a practical solution to the problem.

I suspect the reason that nobody uses it is due to its toxicity - it taints anything that transitively uses it in any practical way. This leads to all sorts of nonsensical violations. For example, say you write a document in a word processor that uses a leftpad lib distributed under this license. Then you email that document to someone else. Congratulations, you're now in violation of the license - you distributed a "derivative work" of the leftpad lib to someone "other than you" over a "network".

The terms of this license are so restrictive and cumbersome as to make it basically useless. Anything you publish under it can't effectively be used by the vast majority of the people who would want to use it, at which point you might as well not publish your work at all. I certainly wouldn't view this as a panacea for solving the SaaS-wrapping-OS-code problem.

[1] https://pypi.org/search/?c=License+%3A%3A+OSI+Approved+%3A%3...