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> A need has been identified that can't be met by v3, it's time to start working on v4. Software-as-a-service under GPLv3 isn't required to provide source code
by a1369209993 7y ago
> A need has been identified that can't be met by v3, it's time to start working on v4.
Software-as-a-service under GPLv3 isn't required to provide source code to remote users (AGPL acommplishes exactly nothing in this regard), so there definitely is such a need, but I don't know if RMS is actually working on that.
- tome 7y agoI thought that's exactly what AGPL was for. Is there something flawed about it?
- a1369209993 7y agoWell, the biggest problem is that the AGPL isn't the GPL, so the existence of the AGPL doesn't actually help with the large number of existing GPL projects, even if they're licenced as "GPL version N or later" (which v4 would help with). However, the problem I was actually thinking of ("exactly nothing"), was that last time I looked into it, the consensus appeared to be that you could copy code between a AGPL project and a GPL one, which obviously makes the AGPL useless. But, on checking, I can't actually find a citation for this, and the licence text doesn't seem to support that interpretation. So I have to retract my previous statement and amend it to: the AGPL does very little to help with SaaS attacks on open source software, primarily because almost noone uses it, and because the FSF continues to recommend the known-broken non-affero GPL as its default copyleft licence.