3 ms·

Certainly a change of heart -- we were trying to host an AGPL project on Google Code in 2008 and were told to find a new host or face deletion. There was a disc

by shaddi 16y ago

Certainly a change of heart -- we were trying to host an AGPL project on Google Code in 2008 and were told to find a new host or face deletion. There was a discussion that got a bit heated in fact, with with Chris DiBona at one point calling the AGPL "deeply flawed". http://groups.google.com/group/google-code-hosting/browse_thread/thread/1714c5c0ef5d9f9f/a985013e626cc1ba http://groups.google.com/group/google-code-hosting/browse_th...

durin42 16y ago
AGPL does have some pretty deep flaws. See [0] for a description of some of the problems. I can't say I'd ever touch AGPL code with a 10 foot pole, simply because I've talked to lawyers about it and it's unbelievably messy (add to that the fact that a user of the AGPL is probably much more likely to sue you if you don't meet their expectations on the license.) [0] http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=4297#c6 http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=4297#c6
tzs 16y ago
He's right that is is deeply flawed. In no particular order: 1. It violates the FSF's "Free Software Definition". Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program for any purpose. They explain this as: The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her. If I, as a user, wish to run an AGPL program as a daemon on my system to generate forms that get presented to customers and that processes the input the customers type into the forms, I'm the user. AGPL requires that I communicate about the program with the customers. This violates Freedom 0. 2. It seems at odds with #10 of the OSI Open Source Definition ("No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface"). 3. It prohibits something that is allowed by copyright law. Pretty much every other free/open license is based on granting permission for you to do things that would not be allowed under copyright law, without requiring you to give up any of your rights allowed by copyright as the owner of a particular copy lawfully made. To put it succinctly, AGPL is a EULA. That the FSF accepted AGPL shows a major breakdown in their idealism.

by shaddi 16y ago

durin42 16y ago

AGPL does have some pretty deep flaws. See [0] for a description of some of the problems. I can't say I'd ever touch AGPL code with a 10 foot pole, simply because I've talked to lawyers about it and it's unbelievably messy (add to that the fact that a user of the AGPL is probably much more likely to sue you if you don't meet their expectations on the license.) [0] http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=4297#c6 http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=4297#c6

tzs 16y ago

He's right that is is deeply flawed. In no particular order: 1. It violates the FSF's "Free Software Definition". Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program for any purpose. They explain this as: The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her. If I, as a user, wish to run an AGPL program as a daemon on my system to generate forms that get presented to customers and that processes the input the customers type into the forms, I'm the user. AGPL requires that I communicate about the program with the customers. This violates Freedom 0. 2. It seems at odds with #10 of the OSI Open Source Definition ("No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface"). 3. It prohibits something that is allowed by copyright law. Pretty much every other free/open license is based on granting permission for you to do things that would not be allowed under copyright law, without requiring you to give up any of your rights allowed by copyright as the owner of a particular copy lawfully made. To put it succinctly, AGPL is a EULA. That the FSF accepted AGPL shows a major breakdown in their idealism.