4 ms·

> There's the theoretical possibility of a copyright claim for the text of the AGPL, where the AGPL's copyright holders disallow derivative works There's also

> There's the theoretical possibility of a copyright claim for the text of the AGPL, where the AGPL's copyright holders disallow derivative works There's also a pretty clear case for promissory estoppel since their FAQ (which is "maintained by the Free Software Foundation's Licensing and Compliance Lab") says "we will not raise legal objections to your making a modified license": https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#ModifyGPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#ModifyGPL

rectang 5y ago
But Neo4J didn't fulfill the conditions of that FAQ, particularly this: > provided that you call your license by another name
- bombcar 5y ago
  Given that the AGPL itself uses qualifiers to be a different license from the GPL arguably adding the “with commons clause” is a different name.
  - rectang 5y ago
    That's the argument that the Commons Clause authors made — that they should be able to sponge off of the goodwill of FOSS community. It's outrageous, offensive, and I strongly suspect a losing legal argument so long as the original license name is a defensible trademark. Consider the Apache Software License version 2.0. "Apache" is a registered trademark held by the Apache Software Foundation in the US and other jurisdictions. The Commons Clause is not additive, it is antithetical to the values of the ASF and directly undermines the ASF's mission. Calling something the "Apache License with the Commons Clause" damages the interests of the ASF by introducing a confusingly named product into the market. What I have more questions about are other licenses where there's not necessarily an obvious trademark held by a willing defender. Can you call your deceptive fake FOSS license the "Common Development and Distribution License"? I'm not so sure about trademark defense there — the only option might be social pressure.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Greg’s Private License Very Three, or GPL v3 is my new license. Not at all sneaky.
    - Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
      I would reduce "the Commons Clause [...] is antithetical to the values of the ASF" to "_one_ of the values". As an example of other values untouched by the Common Clause, the Apache License 2.0 includes: "(4.b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files;". The values here are correct attribution of work, and protecting consumers by making changes easily spotable. Please do not collapse all open source licenses into a single point value, it does them no favor. And if you really have to, then at least use the one about open access to the source code. The one in the name. Yes, the Common Clause violates point 6 of the opensource.org/osd - but there are 10 points on that list. And the OSI is not the be-all-end-all of defining open source, even if it sues people for using the word, it not the one and only source of truth, not some religion of 10 commandments that wants its followers to harass heretics. And this is important, because this whole discussion is as old as open source. Besides commercial use with negligible own contribution as seen in the Common Clause, there are other well known examples of restrictions people added to their works in spite of point 6, like a "no military use" clause that was quite popular for some time. That prevented good software from being distributed by Debian, because of Debians choice to only include software that complies with all of its ideals. People first and foremost have the freedom to license their original work however they want. Some restrictions, such as trademarks, may apply. You have a point with trademarks and naming a modified license in a confusing way, but i think you are overreacting when you call the Common Clause "outrageous, offensive" and "to sponge off of the goodwill of FOSS". Yes, the license that is "AGPLv3 + Common Clause" may never become OSI approved, but for the consumer the modification is easy to spot and understand. And that actually does follow an important value of the FOSS community. Ironically one that is not part of the 10 but included in the Apache License 2.0
      - _benedict 5y ago
        Perhaps limit your policing of others' phraseology to cases where it's clearly wrong or harmful? The Apache Software License and the Apache Software Foundation are not the same thing. The latter is a human organisation and its values are determined by its members - some of these values are not even codified, so it may be hard for an outsider to determine them - but in this case I am inclined to agree with the GP. The ASF promotes permissive software distribution - this includes the right to remove permissions when relicensing. However, distributing such a modified license under the Apache umbrella potentially harms that goal by muddying the meaning of "Apache licensed"
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > Given that the AGPL itself uses qualifiers to be a different license from the GPL arguably adding the “with commons clause” is a different name. Copyright holders aren’t bound by license conditions they impose on others.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago

rectang 5y ago

But Neo4J didn't fulfill the conditions of that FAQ, particularly this: > provided that you call your license by another name

bombcar 5y ago
Given that the AGPL itself uses qualifiers to be a different license from the GPL arguably adding the “with commons clause” is a different name.
- rectang 5y ago
  That's the argument that the Commons Clause authors made — that they should be able to sponge off of the goodwill of FOSS community. It's outrageous, offensive, and I strongly suspect a losing legal argument so long as the original license name is a defensible trademark. Consider the Apache Software License version 2.0. "Apache" is a registered trademark held by the Apache Software Foundation in the US and other jurisdictions. The Commons Clause is not additive, it is antithetical to the values of the ASF and directly undermines the ASF's mission. Calling something the "Apache License with the Commons Clause" damages the interests of the ASF by introducing a confusingly named product into the market. What I have more questions about are other licenses where there's not necessarily an obvious trademark held by a willing defender. Can you call your deceptive fake FOSS license the "Common Development and Distribution License"? I'm not so sure about trademark defense there — the only option might be social pressure.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Greg’s Private License Very Three, or GPL v3 is my new license. Not at all sneaky.
  - Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
    I would reduce "the Commons Clause [...] is antithetical to the values of the ASF" to "_one_ of the values". As an example of other values untouched by the Common Clause, the Apache License 2.0 includes: "(4.b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files;". The values here are correct attribution of work, and protecting consumers by making changes easily spotable. Please do not collapse all open source licenses into a single point value, it does them no favor. And if you really have to, then at least use the one about open access to the source code. The one in the name. Yes, the Common Clause violates point 6 of the opensource.org/osd - but there are 10 points on that list. And the OSI is not the be-all-end-all of defining open source, even if it sues people for using the word, it not the one and only source of truth, not some religion of 10 commandments that wants its followers to harass heretics. And this is important, because this whole discussion is as old as open source. Besides commercial use with negligible own contribution as seen in the Common Clause, there are other well known examples of restrictions people added to their works in spite of point 6, like a "no military use" clause that was quite popular for some time. That prevented good software from being distributed by Debian, because of Debians choice to only include software that complies with all of its ideals. People first and foremost have the freedom to license their original work however they want. Some restrictions, such as trademarks, may apply. You have a point with trademarks and naming a modified license in a confusing way, but i think you are overreacting when you call the Common Clause "outrageous, offensive" and "to sponge off of the goodwill of FOSS". Yes, the license that is "AGPLv3 + Common Clause" may never become OSI approved, but for the consumer the modification is easy to spot and understand. And that actually does follow an important value of the FOSS community. Ironically one that is not part of the 10 but included in the Apache License 2.0
    - _benedict 5y ago
      Perhaps limit your policing of others' phraseology to cases where it's clearly wrong or harmful? The Apache Software License and the Apache Software Foundation are not the same thing. The latter is a human organisation and its values are determined by its members - some of these values are not even codified, so it may be hard for an outsider to determine them - but in this case I am inclined to agree with the GP. The ASF promotes permissive software distribution - this includes the right to remove permissions when relicensing. However, distributing such a modified license under the Apache umbrella potentially harms that goal by muddying the meaning of "Apache licensed"
- mr_toad 5y ago
  > Given that the AGPL itself uses qualifiers to be a different license from the GPL arguably adding the “with commons clause” is a different name. Copyright holders aren’t bound by license conditions they impose on others.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago