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Not parent, but thank you for the thoughtful explanation. Which free/open source licences do you think would be better for the specific purpose of preventing S

• WorldMaker 3y ago
  I agree with the above commenter that the problem is that SaaSification is a use case of software, rather than properly/entirely a distribution model. Trying to prevent SaaSification falls outside of the available scope of copyright law and thus free/open source licenses entirely. It's the job of an End User License Agreement or a "Mutually Assured Destruction" Patent "Grant" or a Trademark Embargo, not a copyright license/open source license. The fact that all of those options (EULAs, explosive patent grants, strict trademark enforcement) additionally sound so antithetical to free/open source licenses does seem to directly reflect that "Software Freedom 0" paradox that preventing SaaSification tells users how they can't use the software, which is the very opposite of a modern software freedom. (The FSF probably made a massive mistake in accepting the AGPL as anything more than GPL fan fiction, because it does seem to reflect that they don't trust their own software freedoms and will accept some unfortunate compromises on them.) I don't know if there is an easy answer for how you build free/open source software and prevent SaaSification without also terribly compromising some of the core virtues of what free/open source software was meant to uphold in the first place.