4 ms·

I think I forgot who I was talking to for a sec... I'm guessing there's quite a bit we agree on :) Looking across the aisle, I do wonder from time to time if t

I think I forgot who I was talking to for a sec... I'm guessing there's quite a bit we agree on :) Looking across the aisle, I do wonder from time to time if the AGPL was a sort of breaking point. GPL always "threatened" industry at the desktop level and lower but once everyone's beloved FAANG+/- was in the cross-hairs the discussion maybe degraded a bit.

steveklabnik 8y ago
:) I think so, but I tend to think of it as not the AGPL's fault, exactly. That is, the GPL was a product of its time: it's very concerned with the details of writing non-networked C code. It pre-dates the web! It was impossible to forsee these kinds of changes, and it just so happens that it was not really prepared for them. The AGPL was an attempt to plug that hole, but it was too little, too late.
- AWildC182 8y ago
  Yea, I don't think it's AGPL's fault. I think people became complacent with the landscape of GPL and what that meant for production applications but when GNU came around and tried to make it all apply uniformly (right after dot-com) OSI had already gained enough traction that a full GPL looked "weird" and turned into more of a signal that you didn't want anyone to use your code. That and Google et. al. banned it as it obviously threatened its model that some might see as abusing GPL.
naniwaduni 8y ago
Almost the right timeframe, but from my perspective the GPL2/GPL3 split is what broke everything. The GPL was a glorious hack as long as it was alone in its niche (supported by admonitions against license proliferation), but its success was predicated on it instantiating itself as a singleton. But the basic problem was simultaneously desiring (a) the ability to combine any collection of software and (b) preventing certain combinations of software. Now that we have to choose, the zeitgeist seems to have given up on (b).

steveklabnik 8y ago

:) I think so, but I tend to think of it as not the AGPL's fault, exactly. That is, the GPL was a product of its time: it's very concerned with the details of writing non-networked C code. It pre-dates the web! It was impossible to forsee these kinds of changes, and it just so happens that it was not really prepared for them. The AGPL was an attempt to plug that hole, but it was too little, too late.

AWildC182 8y ago
Yea, I don't think it's AGPL's fault. I think people became complacent with the landscape of GPL and what that meant for production applications but when GNU came around and tried to make it all apply uniformly (right after dot-com) OSI had already gained enough traction that a full GPL looked "weird" and turned into more of a signal that you didn't want anyone to use your code. That and Google et. al. banned it as it obviously threatened its model that some might see as abusing GPL.

naniwaduni 8y ago

Almost the right timeframe, but from my perspective the GPL2/GPL3 split is what broke everything. The GPL was a glorious hack as long as it was alone in its niche (supported by admonitions against license proliferation), but its success was predicated on it instantiating itself as a singleton. But the basic problem was simultaneously desiring (a) the ability to combine any collection of software and (b) preventing certain combinations of software. Now that we have to choose, the zeitgeist seems to have given up on (b).