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The original GPL was a brilliant hack - it has enabled and inspired a global revolution. But a hack can only go so far. Roads and railways, power stations and
by lifeisstillgood 2y ago
The original GPL was a brilliant hack - it has enabled and inspired a global revolution.
But a hack can only go so far. Roads and railways, power stations and hospitals are not hacks they are society level investments.
FOSS software and FOSS as a service have become ubiquitous and an irresistible part of our daily lives. They have become society level investments even if a small number of hobbyists disproportionately drove them.
And as such there are no more hacks to fixing power imbalances - no secret, no quick trick. We don’t think of some clever hack to keep the power companies in line.
If we want to fix the power imbalances of Big Tech we do it through Big Society (usually Big Government).
HN’ers love a technological fix for a technological problem - but sometimes we need to realise this needs a political fix
(And no this is not a comment on upcoming US election, this is the boring part - write your congressman / MP / etc. join a Union at work. Attend a local council meeting (it always worries them when people do that :-)
Now what kind of regulation, what kind of world do we want? Love to talk about that. But how we get there - it’s through politics, through all of us.
- thagb 2y agoThe AGPL instills fear into SAAS corporations. A no-ai-training clause could be added. But the FSF has been behind the curve with SAAS and is now with AI. If they did care about freedom at any cost, the AGPL would have been the default GPLv3.
- lifeisstillgood 2y agoLinus basically killed the GPL3 - and I think he is right. I don’t like it either - it’s overreach for a 10 clause contract - hence the “we need another way, through politics, not putting so much weight on a contract / license that has only ever been to court once I think?
- KingMob 2y ago> AGPL instills fear into SAAS corporations When I brought the same thing up on Lobste.rs, someone pointed out that AWS has no problems selling a hosted Grafana, which uses the AGPL. (https://aws.amazon.com/grafana/ https://aws.amazon.com/grafana/) I'm not sure the AGPL is as fearsome as imagined, even with its restrictions.
- pabs3 2y agoThe AGPL is easy to comply with, even for SaaSS corporations. It should not cause any fear. Just either use the code unmodified, or release your modifications to your customers.