4 ms·

A license for the internet of the 90s, not the one we have today.

by ctrw 3y ago

bberenberg 3y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I have seen a fair amount of criticism of AGPL on here recently and am trying to understand the perspective.
madeofpalk 3y ago
What's wrong with AGPL? Why is it not suitable for the "internet of today"?
- throwaway48476 3y ago
  It's not viral enough. It's easy for AWS to host a version of an AGPL project and just point to the source code. Cloud hosted instances are the primary business models for a lot of projects. The solution is to add a requirement that any platform the software is hosted on also has to be open source.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    > Cloud hosted instances are the primary business models for a lot of projects. No one is entitled to their business models, no matter how noble their goals. It's quite simple: if you believe in the ethos of Free Software, you need to be prepared to the possibility of other people taking your work, doing modifications and even profiting from it. That is the whole point. If you don't want "evil corporations" from taking your code, then keep it closed and say it so. But don't be dishonest with others when you say that you "support open source" while not ready to walk the walk.
    - jen20 3y ago
      SSPL achieves your goal far better than AGPL, as already enumerated in this thread.
    - thejohnconway 3y ago
      People are struggling with what I think of as the pyrrhic victory of open source software. Vast swathes of computing is done with OSS, yet there is very little software freedom for actual people, because it’s all running in megacorps data centres with all the data locked away. Essentially, the intention of copyleft to increase software freedom, which is the overall mission, has foundered. It is didn’t work and need revising. Smaller companies are an ally of convenience here.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        No, the problem is that people conflating "free as in speech" with "free as in beer". Data is locked in megacorps because people are giving away their freedoms in exchange of convenience. > the overall mission, has foundered. Absolutely not. I've never had so much freedom on how to do computing.
        thejohnconway 3y ago
        I don't think the intention of OSS was to make computing more free for a tiny elite who are will to live with quite a lot of inconvenience. Maybe I'm wrong. I certainly don't think the average computer user is more free in their software use than they were, say, 10 years ago. Or 20.
        rglullis 3y ago
        1) The average user has a lot more choices of free systems to use. That they still prefer to lock themselves to a closed platform is not a failure of FOSS. 2) in the worst case analysis, FOSS trickle downs to people. Eg: WhatsApp could only have started if we had FOSS. It may have been colored by Facebook, but at the end of the day it was thanks to it that the "non-elite" managed to disrupt the telcos and offer messaging for free.
        thejohnconway 3y ago
        It absolutely is a failure of FOSS. It was supposed to be viral, leading to greater software freedom for all. The strategy has been countered and subverted by running FOSS on servers people don’t control. Half the world’s communication being under the control of one company with a dictator is hardly a success.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    What's your outcome? Are you actually asking for a "No AWS" license? AGPL is fine - it ensures that open source projects remain open source. If a vendor hosts an AGPL project as is (unlikely imho) and is able to point to the existing repo for source, then that's great. If they make changes to the code, they must also make that source available through a compatible license.
    - ctrw 3y ago
      I can provide agpl software for a printer driver which none the less doesn't let you load the source code for the printer driver. If the original case for the GLP is still not covered by the AGPL in $current_year open source licenses have failed.
  - piaste 3y ago
    > The solution is to add a requirement that any platform the software is hosted on also has to be open source. Even that is a somewhat temporary hack. The SSPL spreads to: > "management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available" and sure, AWS and Azure definitely don't want to open source all of that stuff now, or for the next decade or two. But that's not their competitive advantage; that's their datacentres and their sheer gigantic size and deep pockets, making them a "safer" partner for enterprises. National governments won't run a critical service on Redis Cloud when Azure Redis is available, even if the software stacks were 100% identical. It's quite possible to imagine a cloud provider in 2040 that does run a fully OSS stack and is able to sell SSPL software on a massive scale without paying a cent to the original developers. Doesn't even have to be a new actor, Amazon could spin-off a separate experimental organization for that purpose. If that were to happen, could another license solve the problem?

A license for the internet of the 90s, not the one we have today.

by ctrw 3y ago

A license for the internet of the 90s, not the one we have today.

Can you elaborate on this? I have seen a fair amount of criticism of AGPL on here recently and am trying to understand the perspective.

madeofpalk 3y ago

What's wrong with AGPL? Why is it not suitable for the "internet of today"?

throwaway48476 3y ago
It's not viral enough. It's easy for AWS to host a version of an AGPL project and just point to the source code. Cloud hosted instances are the primary business models for a lot of projects. The solution is to add a requirement that any platform the software is hosted on also has to be open source.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > Cloud hosted instances are the primary business models for a lot of projects. No one is entitled to their business models, no matter how noble their goals. It's quite simple: if you believe in the ethos of Free Software, you need to be prepared to the possibility of other people taking your work, doing modifications and even profiting from it. That is the whole point. If you don't want "evil corporations" from taking your code, then keep it closed and say it so. But don't be dishonest with others when you say that you "support open source" while not ready to walk the walk.
  - jen20 3y ago
    SSPL achieves your goal far better than AGPL, as already enumerated in this thread.
  - thejohnconway 3y ago
    People are struggling with what I think of as the pyrrhic victory of open source software. Vast swathes of computing is done with OSS, yet there is very little software freedom for actual people, because it’s all running in megacorps data centres with all the data locked away. Essentially, the intention of copyleft to increase software freedom, which is the overall mission, has foundered. It is didn’t work and need revising. Smaller companies are an ally of convenience here.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      No, the problem is that people conflating "free as in speech" with "free as in beer". Data is locked in megacorps because people are giving away their freedoms in exchange of convenience. > the overall mission, has foundered. Absolutely not. I've never had so much freedom on how to do computing.
      - thejohnconway 3y ago
        I don't think the intention of OSS was to make computing more free for a tiny elite who are will to live with quite a lot of inconvenience. Maybe I'm wrong. I certainly don't think the average computer user is more free in their software use than they were, say, 10 years ago. Or 20.
        rglullis 3y ago
        1) The average user has a lot more choices of free systems to use. That they still prefer to lock themselves to a closed platform is not a failure of FOSS. 2) in the worst case analysis, FOSS trickle downs to people. Eg: WhatsApp could only have started if we had FOSS. It may have been colored by Facebook, but at the end of the day it was thanks to it that the "non-elite" managed to disrupt the telcos and offer messaging for free.
        thejohnconway 3y ago
        It absolutely is a failure of FOSS. It was supposed to be viral, leading to greater software freedom for all. The strategy has been countered and subverted by running FOSS on servers people don’t control. Half the world’s communication being under the control of one company with a dictator is hardly a success.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  What's your outcome? Are you actually asking for a "No AWS" license? AGPL is fine - it ensures that open source projects remain open source. If a vendor hosts an AGPL project as is (unlikely imho) and is able to point to the existing repo for source, then that's great. If they make changes to the code, they must also make that source available through a compatible license.
  - ctrw 3y ago
    I can provide agpl software for a printer driver which none the less doesn't let you load the source code for the printer driver. If the original case for the GLP is still not covered by the AGPL in $current_year open source licenses have failed.
- piaste 3y ago
  > The solution is to add a requirement that any platform the software is hosted on also has to be open source. Even that is a somewhat temporary hack. The SSPL spreads to: > "management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available" and sure, AWS and Azure definitely don't want to open source all of that stuff now, or for the next decade or two. But that's not their competitive advantage; that's their datacentres and their sheer gigantic size and deep pockets, making them a "safer" partner for enterprises. National governments won't run a critical service on Redis Cloud when Azure Redis is available, even if the software stacks were 100% identical. It's quite possible to imagine a cloud provider in 2040 that does run a fully OSS stack and is able to sell SSPL software on a massive scale without paying a cent to the original developers. Doesn't even have to be a new actor, Amazon could spin-off a separate experimental organization for that purpose. If that were to happen, could another license solve the problem?