3 ms·

> It's almost like the FSF intended to trick the authors who choose AGPL into not realizing what terms they were licensing their work under. Yeah I don't reall

> It's almost like the FSF intended to trick the authors who choose AGPL into not realizing what terms they were licensing their work under. Yeah I don't really understand the logic here. It's almost like they're considering themselves the root licensor for all projects that use the AGPL. Which (despite their intention) comes across as pretty hostile towards software authors.

timmb 5y ago
If you don’t want to offer the freedoms of a licence then pick a different one. To choose one with an established meaning and then remove those freedoms undermines the purpose of having standardised licences. The authors are potentially setting users up for unintended infringement. I see it as similar to organic food. Once you add non-organic ingredients then it’s not organic any more. You can do what you want but it’s fair enough if everyone else asks you to respect the labels they’ve built to let people make informed decisions.
- peeters 5y ago
  > If you don’t want to offer the freedoms of a licence then pick a different one. That's exactly what they did. Namely, they crafted a custom license that combined requirements from two other licenses -- granted in a confusing way. > The authors are potentially setting users up for unintended infringement. I do think the ambiguity in the contract language would certainly have bearing on any remedy the court would establish if they did find that the users infringed. > I see it as similar to organic food. Once you add non-organic ingredients then it’s not organic any more. You can do what you want but it’s fair enough if everyone else asks you to respect the labels they’ve built to let people make informed decisions. I'm not sure I see the similarities given that legal contracts are not a collection of labels. You don't sign a document that just says "lease" on it. If you're getting at the question of whether AGPLv3 + CC should be able to advertise itself as FOSS, then I agree, but that's not what this part of the conversation is about. If you're implying that they shouldn't be able to use the term "AGPLv3" in their license language, well I don't disagree but I don't know enough about the areas of law that would prevent that (is it trademarked? etc).
webmobdev 5y ago
The FSF license is not just to protect the rights of the open source authors but the users too. If a software author doesn't understand this, they are the one who are to be blamed, as they don't understand the open source philosophy that the FSF advocates. One can ofcourse choose to disagree with some of their principles. In such cases, they are free to copy the FSF license an modify it as they want, but they can't call it an FSF license. Or they can choose a different open source license that aligns more with their philosophy.
- didibus 5y ago
  That's what Neo4j did, they took the AGPL and added a Commons Clause making it AGPL with Commons Clause. They then say: > Neo4j Enterprise consists of modules from Neo4j Community Edition and modules licensed under AGPLv3 with the Commons Clause in this repository, and other closed source components not present in this repository. I actually don't see them claiming their enterprise edition was ever open source, they also have an open source community edition licensed under GPL V3. This is their License file: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/blob/3.4.13/enterprise/com/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/blob/3.4.13/enterprise/com/LI... You can see the: "Commons Clause" License Condition at the end of it. Also, the history of the project, their enterprise edition started as AGPL, and later versions they added the Commons Clause over it, and finally now they've just gone closed source, probably to avoid all these legal woes.
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    Advocates of FSF argue that if Neo4j changed the AGPL license in a way that invalidates the intent and principle behind AGPL, they can no longer refer to it as an AGPL license. And if they do so it is false advertising. The court has agreed with this assertion and also said due to the changes in the license, Neo4j was doing false advertising by claiming it was "free and opensource".

timmb 5y ago

If you don’t want to offer the freedoms of a licence then pick a different one. To choose one with an established meaning and then remove those freedoms undermines the purpose of having standardised licences. The authors are potentially setting users up for unintended infringement. I see it as similar to organic food. Once you add non-organic ingredients then it’s not organic any more. You can do what you want but it’s fair enough if everyone else asks you to respect the labels they’ve built to let people make informed decisions.

peeters 5y ago
> If you don’t want to offer the freedoms of a licence then pick a different one. That's exactly what they did. Namely, they crafted a custom license that combined requirements from two other licenses -- granted in a confusing way. > The authors are potentially setting users up for unintended infringement. I do think the ambiguity in the contract language would certainly have bearing on any remedy the court would establish if they did find that the users infringed. > I see it as similar to organic food. Once you add non-organic ingredients then it’s not organic any more. You can do what you want but it’s fair enough if everyone else asks you to respect the labels they’ve built to let people make informed decisions. I'm not sure I see the similarities given that legal contracts are not a collection of labels. You don't sign a document that just says "lease" on it. If you're getting at the question of whether AGPLv3 + CC should be able to advertise itself as FOSS, then I agree, but that's not what this part of the conversation is about. If you're implying that they shouldn't be able to use the term "AGPLv3" in their license language, well I don't disagree but I don't know enough about the areas of law that would prevent that (is it trademarked? etc).

webmobdev 5y ago

The FSF license is not just to protect the rights of the open source authors but the users too. If a software author doesn't understand this, they are the one who are to be blamed, as they don't understand the open source philosophy that the FSF advocates. One can ofcourse choose to disagree with some of their principles. In such cases, they are free to copy the FSF license an modify it as they want, but they can't call it an FSF license. Or they can choose a different open source license that aligns more with their philosophy.

didibus 5y ago
That's what Neo4j did, they took the AGPL and added a Commons Clause making it AGPL with Commons Clause. They then say: > Neo4j Enterprise consists of modules from Neo4j Community Edition and modules licensed under AGPLv3 with the Commons Clause in this repository, and other closed source components not present in this repository. I actually don't see them claiming their enterprise edition was ever open source, they also have an open source community edition licensed under GPL V3. This is their License file: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/blob/3.4.13/enterprise/com/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/blob/3.4.13/enterprise/com/LI... You can see the: "Commons Clause" License Condition at the end of it. Also, the history of the project, their enterprise edition started as AGPL, and later versions they added the Commons Clause over it, and finally now they've just gone closed source, probably to avoid all these legal woes.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Advocates of FSF argue that if Neo4j changed the AGPL license in a way that invalidates the intent and principle behind AGPL, they can no longer refer to it as an AGPL license. And if they do so it is false advertising. The court has agreed with this assertion and also said due to the changes in the license, Neo4j was doing false advertising by claiming it was "free and opensource".