Comment Re:Free SaaSS can exist (Score 1) 326
which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.
A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.
Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.