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> Most interesting opinions come from experience. If the author has never built anything significant, perhaps they ought to stop and consider where their opinio
by mbleigh 16y ago
> Most interesting opinions come from experience. If the author has never built anything significant, perhaps they ought to stop and consider where their opinions come from.
The problem is that 90% of open-source libraries ARE small-to-medium size projects like the ones I've built. I didn't say I'm new to open source (I've released numerous successful projects) or even argue that for many big complex projects the GPL or other copyleft licenses are the wrong way to go. I'm simply stating that for projects like the ones I build the GPL is more likely to reduce user adoption than help build a contributing community.
> This assumes that the same people contributing code would refuse to do so if the project was GPL-licensed
Not at all. I can't think of a reason that someone would refuse to contribute to an open source project because it was under the GPL. However, my argument is that many people will never even start using a library to begin with if they don't want to put up with the licensing headaches entailed with GPL.
> This is also wrong. The AGPL is, like the GPL, a copyright license. It only applies if the remote application (or derived data) is itself being sent to a client.
I'm not extremely well versed in the AGPL, I'll concede. Are you saying that someone could build a fork of Diaspora (say Facebook forked it and rewrote their entire site on top of it), made it available to the public without releasing the source and it would be compliant with the AGPL? If so, I retract my statements about the AGPL, but I'm under a different impression.
- jmillikin 16y ago> The problem is that 90% of open-source libraries ARE small-to-medium size projects like the ones I've built. What's your definition of "small" and "medium"? I'd say a small project takes about a week to go from nothing to a working prototype, and medium might take a month or two. I might be misreading, but "I completed the first version in a day or less" makes it sound like the releases are basically just a few small utilities. > Are you saying that someone could build a fork of Diaspora (say Facebook forked it and rewrote their entire site on top of it), made it available to the public without releasing the source and it would be compliant with the AGPL? I don't know anything about Diaspora, so I can't completely answer this question. However, assuming their protocol library is separate from the user interface, Facebook could indeed build support for Diaspora protocol into their site, using the AGPL'd Diaspora libraries, and not have to release source code. The AGPL is IMO poorly considered. The authors wanted it to behave as you describe, eg, as a sort of super-EULA that covers how the code can be run. However, since it's a copyright license, it doesn't have any action mechanism. If I modify an AGPL'd server, then run it on a publicly accessible host, I'm not doing anything that requires copyright permission and thus am not subject to the code's copyright license. Note that some cases (such as JavaScript-based applications) will require copyright permission for me to host, and thus, be covered by the AGPL. However -- and this is a funny part -- they'd also be covered by the GPL! In other words, anything the AGPL can do, the GPL can also, and the GPL doesn't have aspirations of EULA-ship.