4 ms·

AGPL says roughly "you have to give the source code to anyone who accesses the software over a network". In other words, it's basically trying to say that softw

AGPL says roughly "you have to give the source code to anyone who accesses the software over a network". In other words, it's basically trying to say that software-as-a-service counts as "redistribution" for the purpose of the license. Regarding the Parity license, it used to be called "License Zero Reciprocal" and was submitted to the OSI for approval. When it became clear that that wasn't going to happen (because, as you mention, it clearly violates the OSI definition of Open Source), the author withdrew it[1] and changed the name before it could be formally rejected. [1] https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-December/003855.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists....

zozbot234 7y ago
> In other words, it's basically trying to say that software-as-a-service counts as "redistribution" for the purpose of the license. Copyright law regulates public performance of any covered work - whether some activity counts as "redistribution" is ultimately a matter of law, not just licensing. AGPL protects the user by providing explicit language for what's required wrt. the public-performance case. Other copyleft licenses do not deal with this ambiguity.
kemitchell 7y ago
I never withdrew L0-R and OSI never rejected it. But that implies a formality to the process that was never there. I still disagree strongly that L0-R fell outside OSI's definition. Do you have a reading of that definition that doesn't exclude existing OSI-approved licenses? A few folks tried to build some, purpose-built to exclude L0-R, but they didn't stand up. People opposed the license for entirely separate reasons, and only tried to talk in definition terms after weeks of trying to steer discussions there. Your description of AGPL is pretty good, but it better suits OSL than AGPL. AGPL's approach to network copyleft stands largely apart from its approach to distribution-triggered copyleft. Only the definitions of "modify" and "Corresponding Source" get reused in meaningful ways.

zozbot234 7y ago

> In other words, it's basically trying to say that software-as-a-service counts as "redistribution" for the purpose of the license. Copyright law regulates public performance of any covered work - whether some activity counts as "redistribution" is ultimately a matter of law, not just licensing. AGPL protects the user by providing explicit language for what's required wrt. the public-performance case. Other copyleft licenses do not deal with this ambiguity.

kemitchell 7y ago

I never withdrew L0-R and OSI never rejected it. But that implies a formality to the process that was never there. I still disagree strongly that L0-R fell outside OSI's definition. Do you have a reading of that definition that doesn't exclude existing OSI-approved licenses? A few folks tried to build some, purpose-built to exclude L0-R, but they didn't stand up. People opposed the license for entirely separate reasons, and only tried to talk in definition terms after weeks of trying to steer discussions there. Your description of AGPL is pretty good, but it better suits OSL than AGPL. AGPL's approach to network copyleft stands largely apart from its approach to distribution-triggered copyleft. Only the definitions of "modify" and "Corresponding Source" get reused in meaningful ways.