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How, in the absence of the AGPL, does one achieve both: 1. Open your source up to the security and privacy conscious communities and users so they can audit it
by dcow 6y ago
How, in the absence of the AGPL, does one achieve both:
1. Open your source up to the security and privacy conscious communities and users so they can audit it and issue their sign of approval.
2. Defend your product against large organizations with the resources to take your software and improve and operate it cutting you out of the equation.
- SilverRed 6y ago> 2. Defend your product against large organizations with the resources to take your software and improve and operate it cutting you out of the equation. You don't/can't. That's what the megacorps want. They want the GPL, FSF and RMS gone so they can exploit all of the work done for free in open source communities.
- mannerheim 6y agoDoes the AGPL achieve either? 1. It requires modifications to be published, sure, but what prevents someone from modifying server code in a way users don't notice and just lie and say it's unmodified? It's not like a binary where you can build it yourself to compare. 2. Weren't there a couple products that were AGPL until AWS started using them? Redis, I think, was one of them.
- eythian 6y agoTo point 1., it's illegal. You can't (readily) stop people who are willing to do things that are illegal unless you're willing to use legal methods to do so. There are points where you have to accept that a perfect solution is extremely difficult and a hopefully-good-enough solution will have to do.
- mannerheim 6y agoThe problem is, how are you figuring out whether or not someone is breaking the license terms? It's at least possible with software you run on your own machines, but if it's running on a server you don't control, there's no way to tell.
- dcow 6y agoThere are ways to tell and stories of people who have enforced AGPL. I do agree it's generally a harder problem, though.