10 ms·

Sadly, I'm afraid the AGPL license is going to make this untouchable to businesses… :-( [Edit] Interestingly, they cover that. I suppose if you're just running

by zellyn 10y ago

Sadly, I'm afraid the AGPL license is going to make this untouchable to businesses… :-( [Edit] Interestingly, they cover that. I suppose if you're just running Pijul rather than integrating with its code, it might be safe to use in a corporate environment. Still, it's likely to be offputting.

mirekrusin 10y ago
I may be wrong but I think some (most? all?) companies that are blacklisting agpl3 won't bother going into small print details, license alone is a no-go, no?
- kibwen 10y ago
  Any company blacklisting AGPL is going to be blacklisting GPL as well, which would preclude using git as well (even the more permissive libgit2 is just GPL with a linking exception).
  - skybrian 10y ago
    That doesn't seem to be the case in practice?
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    That's not true, I know several companies happy with GPL, and not AGPL. The thing they worry about is deciding what falls under AGPL. With GPL it is easy, if an executable leaves the building, source goes with it. With AGPL, when almost very thing is web connected, it can be hard to draw the line on what you have to open source (or just tell people you are using.. do I have to add every AGPL program in an Ubuntu server install, just in case one is getting used by something else?)
  - tupshin 10y ago
    Can confirm that this is absolutely not the case. I have encountered a number of companies that are absolutely fine with [L]GPL but not going to consider AGPL. Whether rightly or not, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_source_licenses/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_sour... and other writings on the topic had a big impact on enterprise adoption of AGPL software. There's also the fact that most prominent AGPL licensing tends to be around commercially backed software where the main backer owns all the source and is therefore in position to not hold themselves to the same standard of sharing changes as their customers and third parties must do.
scotu 10y ago
Why do you find it offputting? IANAL but it basically doesn't allow you to add code to (or get code from) Pijul itself and making it in another license. You can use it to store closed source code, you can host it yourself, offer it as a sevice for money, you can even create your own extensions as long as you release them AGPL... I feel that AGPL for a product is misunderstood and pre-rejected without justification by far too many. Now, if you are developing a library, then AGPL sucks as a license for it, but for a cohesive product? Seems acceptable to me (not sure if it's my favorite choice)
- omginternets 10y ago
  >I feel that AGPL for a product is misunderstood and pre-rejected without justification by far too many. Isn't that precisely the parent comment's point? Perhaps it shouldn't be this way, but the argument is that the AGPL will make pijul "untouchable" by businesses, de facto.
  - scotu 10y ago
    but does granparent commenter find it off putting now that he realized it's not content viral? It's weird that it's not today's Oracle or Microsoft equivalent spreading the FUD/false info nowadays but developers in discussions on this very site. AGPL explicitly does not touch the content it processes, I expect a legal department to be pretty good at understanding that unless they heard something and don't bother to read the license. Anyway I don't really care anymore. We act based on what we believe not on facts (this is not directed to any parent comments, to be clear). Whatever
    - omginternets 10y ago
      Again, I think the two of you are arguing on different levels. You're saying AGPL shouldn't be offputting. He's saying that by some quirk of circumstance, it is. In other words, his argument is that picking AGPL was a poor strategic decision, given its (admittedly undeserved) baggage.
  - zellyn 10y ago
mynewtb 10y ago
Only uneducated people think that merely using or deploying AGPL software is 'problematic' in any way. Please don't spread that unreasonable fear.
- zellyn 10y ago
  I can't even.
  - zellyn 10y ago
    Out of curiosity, why the downvotes? Is there a better way to respond to being told you lack education to discuss a matter? (Other than the obvious ignoring completely?)
- BuuQu9hu 10y ago
  I used to be at Google; AGPL was banned there. I hear that it is banned at many other large/huge shops. I run a tiny business. AGPL is banned there too. It isn't an "unreasonable fear". It is a reasonable decision based on mitigation of risk. AGPL is a risky license for end users; it goes too far beyond the Four Freedoms.
- palebluedot 10y ago
  That sort of response, "only uneducated people think...", really shuts down conversation, and is a hindrance to constructive discussion. Whether or not AGPL is 'problematic' is something that can be discussed without ad-hominem attacks.
  - mynewtb 10y ago
    Sorry, I did not mean it like that. ESL here.
    - palebluedot 10y ago
      Thanks for clarifying! Reading your original comment in the context of this comment, I understand how your first comment probably is not what I thought it was originally.
kibwen 10y ago
Since when does anybody ever check the license of compiled binary applications?
- lvh 10y ago
  If you buy a macOS machine today, it ships with bash3.2 by default. That's the last version that was GPLv2. It is a decade old by now. Some companies most definitely care.
  - mempko 10y ago
    Yes, you are right companies care, but they aren't good companies.
  - kibwen 10y ago
    As I've mentioned elsewhere, git is GPL, so Macs are screwed regardless. :P
    - lvh 10y ago
      git and bash3.2 are GPLv2. They didn't stop at the version of bash that was GPL; bash has always been GPL. They stopped at v3 specifically.
    - daenney 10y ago
      And yet macOS ships with Git, version 2.10. GPL(v2) licensed and everything. It's not about GPL, it's about GPLv2 vs GPLv3 and the requirements that come with it.
      - kibwen 10y ago
        I had no idea that Macs shipped with git, happy to hear it. :)
  - auvi 10y ago
    could you please tell me why GPLv2 allows Apple to include bash3.2 with macOS but not the newer versions with GPLv3? I always had the idea that including GPL software requires the rest to be GPL too.
m-j-fox 10y ago
And there will be no PijulHub.
pmontra 10y ago
First of all, from the FAQ: > But maybe we’ve missed something, and the AGPL actually prevents some use of Pijul that we’ve not thought of, and that does not aim at centralizing the internet. If this is the case, please discuss your idea with us on the mailing list. Second, I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. What somebody could do is build a web services around it. As far as a service interfaces pijul with a system() it won't have any licensing problems. Encapsulate it into some RPC wrapper for extra safety. You might have to distribute the wrapper but it won't make it much easier for the competitors. The bulk of the web service can still be closed source. Third, GPL licenses are fair to the original developers and the end users (they get to see the code they use). I understand why other developers might like BSD style licenses and we could spend another 30 years arguing about the virtues and the flaws of the two approaches. I won't get into that but given their goal of decentralizing the Internet I think they picked the right license.
- bachmeier 10y ago
  > I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. Even that overstates the matter. Companies could modify the code all they want as long as they don't distribute that code. That would impact Github competitors - maybe 10 or 20 companies in the entire US.
  - millstone 10y ago
    Facebook uses derivatives of PHP and mySQL today, because those are the technology choices Zuckerberg made in 2004. You hope you should be so lucky! Also, "distribute that code" can be interpreted very broadly. A contractor may access your internal HR system, and now you have to share it with them. A factory line worker may be entitled to the source controlling the robot fixture. A airline passenger may use the in-flight entertainment unit, and be entitled to its source. Etc.
    - pmontra 10y ago
      If the HR, the robot and the entertainment systems are AGPL licensed chances are that their source is already on github. Spot on for PHP and MySQL. PHP has its own license (kind of BSD?) and MySQL is GPL2 or commercial. I bet Facebook could buy the rights of any AGPL product, unless the owner is really firm about principles.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pmeunier 10y ago
Hi! Author here. The situation is slightly more complex than what you describe. Pijul was announced on the darcs blog, not by its authors, way before it was ready (about a year before). We had not really chosen a license back then, so we made the most conservative and protective choice available, and agreed to think again whenever we would have time. Now that we've started to use Pijul for the website (about two weeks ago), we want to change the license. I'm slightly annoyed by all the political statements in GPL3, AGPL3 and several versions of LGPL, such as "you cannot use this on impure devices", or "you cannot use this on platforms with poor support for shared libraries such as windows or mac os" (by which I mean that these platforms don't have real package managers to handle dependencies, and the end user has to either (1) install DLLs manually or (2) install "unshared shared libraries", i.e. one full instance of the library per program using it, which OSX calls an "app"). I am not a lawyer, but GPL2 seems to be free of these. We're not likely to pick anything much more permissive for now. Also, the Pijul and Darcs teams agree that we don't particularly enjoy discussions about licenses, especially when they're not based on factual arguments. Here are answers we've already given: - If you think that "a new anarchistic jurisdiction not recognizing any copyright law will soon emerge, hence Pijul should be in the public domain", we don't agree. The movie Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam, also known as Turkish Star Wars, is available full-length on youtube, to remind everyone that copyright laws may be broken, but not totally useless. Therefore, your dream country may not "emerge" that soon. - Or maybe you think "I'd like to make a living from selling a small wiki based on Pijul, leveraging not only your research ideas, but also the database backend you spent 6 months full-time writing, as well as you SSH library. Why would you not allow me to do that?". The answer is: because if your wiki is useful, we want to use it too, without having to pay! What sense of fairness is this?

by zellyn 10y ago

mirekrusin 10y ago

I may be wrong but I think some (most? all?) companies that are blacklisting agpl3 won't bother going into small print details, license alone is a no-go, no?

kibwen 10y ago
Any company blacklisting AGPL is going to be blacklisting GPL as well, which would preclude using git as well (even the more permissive libgit2 is just GPL with a linking exception).
- skybrian 10y ago
  That doesn't seem to be the case in practice?
- CJefferson 10y ago
  That's not true, I know several companies happy with GPL, and not AGPL. The thing they worry about is deciding what falls under AGPL. With GPL it is easy, if an executable leaves the building, source goes with it. With AGPL, when almost very thing is web connected, it can be hard to draw the line on what you have to open source (or just tell people you are using.. do I have to add every AGPL program in an Ubuntu server install, just in case one is getting used by something else?)
- tupshin 10y ago
  Can confirm that this is absolutely not the case. I have encountered a number of companies that are absolutely fine with [L]GPL but not going to consider AGPL. Whether rightly or not, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_source_licenses/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_sour... and other writings on the topic had a big impact on enterprise adoption of AGPL software. There's also the fact that most prominent AGPL licensing tends to be around commercially backed software where the main backer owns all the source and is therefore in position to not hold themselves to the same standard of sharing changes as their customers and third parties must do.

scotu 10y ago

Why do you find it offputting? IANAL but it basically doesn't allow you to add code to (or get code from) Pijul itself and making it in another license. You can use it to store closed source code, you can host it yourself, offer it as a sevice for money, you can even create your own extensions as long as you release them AGPL... I feel that AGPL for a product is misunderstood and pre-rejected without justification by far too many. Now, if you are developing a library, then AGPL sucks as a license for it, but for a cohesive product? Seems acceptable to me (not sure if it's my favorite choice)

omginternets 10y ago
>I feel that AGPL for a product is misunderstood and pre-rejected without justification by far too many. Isn't that precisely the parent comment's point? Perhaps it shouldn't be this way, but the argument is that the AGPL will make pijul "untouchable" by businesses, de facto.
- scotu 10y ago
  but does granparent commenter find it off putting now that he realized it's not content viral? It's weird that it's not today's Oracle or Microsoft equivalent spreading the FUD/false info nowadays but developers in discussions on this very site. AGPL explicitly does not touch the content it processes, I expect a legal department to be pretty good at understanding that unless they heard something and don't bother to read the license. Anyway I don't really care anymore. We act based on what we believe not on facts (this is not directed to any parent comments, to be clear). Whatever
  - omginternets 10y ago
    Again, I think the two of you are arguing on different levels. You're saying AGPL shouldn't be offputting. He's saying that by some quirk of circumstance, it is. In other words, his argument is that picking AGPL was a poor strategic decision, given its (admittedly undeserved) baggage.
- zellyn 10y ago

mynewtb 10y ago

Only uneducated people think that merely using or deploying AGPL software is 'problematic' in any way. Please don't spread that unreasonable fear.

zellyn 10y ago
I can't even.
- zellyn 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, why the downvotes? Is there a better way to respond to being told you lack education to discuss a matter? (Other than the obvious ignoring completely?)
BuuQu9hu 10y ago
I used to be at Google; AGPL was banned there. I hear that it is banned at many other large/huge shops. I run a tiny business. AGPL is banned there too. It isn't an "unreasonable fear". It is a reasonable decision based on mitigation of risk. AGPL is a risky license for end users; it goes too far beyond the Four Freedoms.
palebluedot 10y ago
That sort of response, "only uneducated people think...", really shuts down conversation, and is a hindrance to constructive discussion. Whether or not AGPL is 'problematic' is something that can be discussed without ad-hominem attacks.
- mynewtb 10y ago
  Sorry, I did not mean it like that. ESL here.
  - palebluedot 10y ago
    Thanks for clarifying! Reading your original comment in the context of this comment, I understand how your first comment probably is not what I thought it was originally.

kibwen 10y ago

Since when does anybody ever check the license of compiled binary applications?

lvh 10y ago
If you buy a macOS machine today, it ships with bash3.2 by default. That's the last version that was GPLv2. It is a decade old by now. Some companies most definitely care.
- mempko 10y ago
  Yes, you are right companies care, but they aren't good companies.
- kibwen 10y ago
  As I've mentioned elsewhere, git is GPL, so Macs are screwed regardless. :P
  - lvh 10y ago
    git and bash3.2 are GPLv2. They didn't stop at the version of bash that was GPL; bash has always been GPL. They stopped at v3 specifically.
  - daenney 10y ago
    And yet macOS ships with Git, version 2.10. GPL(v2) licensed and everything. It's not about GPL, it's about GPLv2 vs GPLv3 and the requirements that come with it.
    - kibwen 10y ago
      I had no idea that Macs shipped with git, happy to hear it. :)
- auvi 10y ago
  could you please tell me why GPLv2 allows Apple to include bash3.2 with macOS but not the newer versions with GPLv3? I always had the idea that including GPL software requires the rest to be GPL too.

m-j-fox 10y ago

And there will be no PijulHub.

pmontra 10y ago

First of all, from the FAQ: > But maybe we’ve missed something, and the AGPL actually prevents some use of Pijul that we’ve not thought of, and that does not aim at centralizing the internet. If this is the case, please discuss your idea with us on the mailing list. Second, I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. What somebody could do is build a web services around it. As far as a service interfaces pijul with a system() it won't have any licensing problems. Encapsulate it into some RPC wrapper for extra safety. You might have to distribute the wrapper but it won't make it much easier for the competitors. The bulk of the web service can still be closed source. Third, GPL licenses are fair to the original developers and the end users (they get to see the code they use). I understand why other developers might like BSD style licenses and we could spend another 30 years arguing about the virtues and the flaws of the two approaches. I won't get into that but given their goal of decentralizing the Internet I think they picked the right license.

bachmeier 10y ago
> I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. Even that overstates the matter. Companies could modify the code all they want as long as they don't distribute that code. That would impact Github competitors - maybe 10 or 20 companies in the entire US.
- millstone 10y ago
  Facebook uses derivatives of PHP and mySQL today, because those are the technology choices Zuckerberg made in 2004. You hope you should be so lucky! Also, "distribute that code" can be interpreted very broadly. A contractor may access your internal HR system, and now you have to share it with them. A factory line worker may be entitled to the source controlling the robot fixture. A airline passenger may use the in-flight entertainment unit, and be entitled to its source. Etc.
  - pmontra 10y ago
    If the HR, the robot and the entertainment systems are AGPL licensed chances are that their source is already on github. Spot on for PHP and MySQL. PHP has its own license (kind of BSD?) and MySQL is GPL2 or commercial. I bet Facebook could buy the rights of any AGPL product, unless the owner is really firm about principles.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pmeunier 10y ago

Hi! Author here. The situation is slightly more complex than what you describe. Pijul was announced on the darcs blog, not by its authors, way before it was ready (about a year before). We had not really chosen a license back then, so we made the most conservative and protective choice available, and agreed to think again whenever we would have time. Now that we've started to use Pijul for the website (about two weeks ago), we want to change the license. I'm slightly annoyed by all the political statements in GPL3, AGPL3 and several versions of LGPL, such as "you cannot use this on impure devices", or "you cannot use this on platforms with poor support for shared libraries such as windows or mac os" (by which I mean that these platforms don't have real package managers to handle dependencies, and the end user has to either (1) install DLLs manually or (2) install "unshared shared libraries", i.e. one full instance of the library per program using it, which OSX calls an "app"). I am not a lawyer, but GPL2 seems to be free of these. We're not likely to pick anything much more permissive for now. Also, the Pijul and Darcs teams agree that we don't particularly enjoy discussions about licenses, especially when they're not based on factual arguments. Here are answers we've already given: - If you think that "a new anarchistic jurisdiction not recognizing any copyright law will soon emerge, hence Pijul should be in the public domain", we don't agree. The movie Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam, also known as Turkish Star Wars, is available full-length on youtube, to remind everyone that copyright laws may be broken, but not totally useless. Therefore, your dream country may not "emerge" that soon. - Or maybe you think "I'd like to make a living from selling a small wiki based on Pijul, leveraging not only your research ideas, but also the database backend you spent 6 months full-time writing, as well as you SSH library. Why would you not allow me to do that?". The answer is: because if your wiki is useful, we want to use it too, without having to pay! What sense of fairness is this?