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> The only thing that non-A GPL allows them to “hoard” that the AGPL does not are their own modifications. The point of the GPL family of licenses is not to so

by cyphar 7y ago

> The only thing that non-A GPL allows them to “hoard” that the AGPL does not are their own modifications. The point of the GPL family of licenses is not to solely make the author's "hard work available to the community". It's to ensure that any modifications which are later provided to other users must be licensed such that those users can make their own modifications. Private modifications are still permitted under the AGPL. In fact, the FSF explicitly states that licenses which disallow private modifications are not free software. > Your hard work is still available to the community. That'd also be true if you used CC-0 or made it public domain. That's not the point of using one of the GPL licences. > My freedoms to keep my own code to myself should not change based upon whether or not I am running a web server process on my machine or not. The AGPL doesn't say "if you run apached on your server you must release your code to everyone who asks for it". It says that people who use your software over a network must be given the source code. And in the context of SaaS and "online-only software" it's pretty clear why such a provision is necessary -- in the nightmare scenario, all software would be only accessible over the internet and you'd have no rights to the source code even if the code was GPL. You might not agree with this measure or the plausibility of such a nightmare scenario (and that's fine), but there is a clear ethical argument for it (and it is consistent with the history of the free software movement).

kazinator 7y ago
In the AGPL version of the nightmare scenario, all software is still accessible only over the Internet. You have all the exact code, but running it yourself has no meaning because users and all their data will not migrate to your installation (which doesn't even have the capacity, but never mind that). The code does all sorts of nefarious things in plain view, but you're powerless to change the installations of that code. You can't stop using those services because life depends on it. Hundreds of millions of them continue to use the services, forcing you to do the same. Most of them don't understand the code or your objections to it. If the fictional character Don Quixote came up with a software license, it would be the AGPL. It's full of nice sentiment, but ineffective and self-defeating.
- cyphar 7y ago
  > You have all the exact code, but running it yourself has no meaning because users and all their data will not migrate to your installation. Free software licenses are mostly about your rights. You can host your own instance with your data. Stallman said on many occasions that it is not possible to exercise software freedom using a service hosted by someone else -- there is a fundamental clash between the freedoms of the users and the freedoms of the administrators. Both groups should be able to exercise their freedom, but unless the users are all administrators (of their own instances) there will always be a mismatch. > Hundreds of millions of them continue to use the services, forcing you to do the same. This is a fair point when it comes to social networks, because the AGPL doesn't require interoperability or the ability to federate (such terms would make little sense in a copyright license meant to be applied to all sorts of works). The real-world example would be the "fediverse" -- you could imagine a circumstance where all fediverse servers decide to block instances that don't implement $BadFeature. I would argue that in that nightmare scenario there really isn't a great solution even in theory. If you require interoperability, you've restricted the software freedoms of the other operators and now people can no longer block bad actors. But I would argue the AGPL does make the situation marginally better -- at least you could run your own (isolated) fediverse.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    > You can host your own instance with your data. No, you cannot host your own global social network with millions of users, your own search engine with billions of web pages indexed, your own online shopping marketplace, not to mention your own online banking, insurance company, med lab result site, drivers' licensing site, government tax site, ... not even if the original sites run nothing but AGPL-ed software in a fully compliant manner.
    - cyphar 7y ago
      > you cannot host your own global social network with millions of users, your own search engine with billions of web pages indexed, your own online shopping marketplace, not to mention your own online banking, insurance company, med lab result site, drivers' licensing site, government tax site The key emphasis was on your data. You can't run your own Facebook clone, but you can run your own version of Google Docs that you use on your own data. There is simply no licensing solution that could fix the software freedom problems of such services, so it's unsurprising that the AGPL doesn't help...

by cyphar 7y ago

kazinator 7y ago

In the AGPL version of the nightmare scenario, all software is still accessible only over the Internet. You have all the exact code, but running it yourself has no meaning because users and all their data will not migrate to your installation (which doesn't even have the capacity, but never mind that). The code does all sorts of nefarious things in plain view, but you're powerless to change the installations of that code. You can't stop using those services because life depends on it. Hundreds of millions of them continue to use the services, forcing you to do the same. Most of them don't understand the code or your objections to it. If the fictional character Don Quixote came up with a software license, it would be the AGPL. It's full of nice sentiment, but ineffective and self-defeating.

cyphar 7y ago
> You have all the exact code, but running it yourself has no meaning because users and all their data will not migrate to your installation. Free software licenses are mostly about your rights. You can host your own instance with your data. Stallman said on many occasions that it is not possible to exercise software freedom using a service hosted by someone else -- there is a fundamental clash between the freedoms of the users and the freedoms of the administrators. Both groups should be able to exercise their freedom, but unless the users are all administrators (of their own instances) there will always be a mismatch. > Hundreds of millions of them continue to use the services, forcing you to do the same. This is a fair point when it comes to social networks, because the AGPL doesn't require interoperability or the ability to federate (such terms would make little sense in a copyright license meant to be applied to all sorts of works). The real-world example would be the "fediverse" -- you could imagine a circumstance where all fediverse servers decide to block instances that don't implement $BadFeature. I would argue that in that nightmare scenario there really isn't a great solution even in theory. If you require interoperability, you've restricted the software freedoms of the other operators and now people can no longer block bad actors. But I would argue the AGPL does make the situation marginally better -- at least you could run your own (isolated) fediverse.
- kazinator 7y ago
  > You can host your own instance with your data. No, you cannot host your own global social network with millions of users, your own search engine with billions of web pages indexed, your own online shopping marketplace, not to mention your own online banking, insurance company, med lab result site, drivers' licensing site, government tax site, ... not even if the original sites run nothing but AGPL-ed software in a fully compliant manner.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    > you cannot host your own global social network with millions of users, your own search engine with billions of web pages indexed, your own online shopping marketplace, not to mention your own online banking, insurance company, med lab result site, drivers' licensing site, government tax site The key emphasis was on your data. You can't run your own Facebook clone, but you can run your own version of Google Docs that you use on your own data. There is simply no licensing solution that could fix the software freedom problems of such services, so it's unsurprising that the AGPL doesn't help...