3 ms·

The AGPLv3 is pretty easy for the corporations to comply with, they just have to either use the unmodified code, or give their users access to the modified code

by pabs3 1y ago

The AGPLv3 is pretty easy for the corporations to comply with, they just have to either use the unmodified code, or give their users access to the modified code. The money will still go to them even with AGPLv3. You have to go to non-FOSS licenses if you want to change where the money goes, but even that won't help, because if you get popular enough they will just use their giant amount of devs to re-implement your stuff and then beat you at marketing.

matheusmoreira 1y ago
> The AGPLv3 is pretty easy for the corporations to comply with > they just have to either use the unmodified code, or give their users access to the modified code If it's so easy, then why don't they? Why do they treat it as legal kryptonite? > You have to go to non-FOSS licenses if you want to change where the money goes I agree with you. That's why I said "AGPLv3 or all rights reserved". I don't necessarily want to change where the money goes though. It's about having the power to do whatever you want as the user of the software and especially as the owner of the computer that's running it. AGPLv3 is simply the license that allows us to give away software while retaining the most possible leverage. Open source licenses just give it all away for literally nothing. > but even that won't help, because if you get popular enough they will just use their giant amount of devs to re-implement your stuff and then beat you at marketing That's okay. Spending one's own time and money on something is not exploitative in any way. They could also negotiate exceptions to the GPL with the copyright holders. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html
- pabs3 1y ago
  Probably cautious lawyers, maybe cargo-culting, hard to tell. Some more discussion of why they don't in this LWN thread: https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/ FTR, AGPLv3 is considered an Open Source license, perhaps you meant permissive/pushover licenses when you said "Open source licenses just give it all away for literally nothing". Also, permissive licenses have conditions too, although they are easy to comply with, violations of them are still quite common, as they are for GPL-family licenses. Deliberately going out of your way to put a smaller company out of business seems like shitty behavior to me. I also wonder about the anti-trust angle; Big Tech using their oligopoly in the developer labour market to kill startups that could become competitors. I never really bought the idea that selling exceptions is ethical, probably better to downgrade to LGPL instead.
  - matheusmoreira 1y ago
    > FTR, AGPLv3 is considered an Open Source license I distinguish free software and open source software due to their different historical roots and values. I also distinguish licenses based on user/developer centrality. Free software licenses are primarily about users. Permissive licenses are all about developer convenience. > permissive licenses have conditions too, although they are easy to comply with It's easy to comply with the AGPLv3 as well. They just have to share source code under the same license and make sure we can use it. They don't want to comply. They want to keep their code secret. They want to find little loopholes to get out of the contract. They want to create controlled "platforms", corporate digital fiefdoms where only their software can run. They want to limit our freedom and impose their will on us. Competitors launching a service based on free software isn't the real issue. The problem is being unable to self-host this stuff on our own computers because they control the software and the hardware. It's all about us, the users of the software. Developers don't really matter. > violations of them are still quite common, as they are for GPL-family licenses People infringe copyright on a daily basis. It's completely normal. They often do not even realize they're doing it. Happens to proprietary software too. Copyright is a lost cause. I advocate for its abolition. Only reason copyleft licenses exist at all is to try to twist copyright into a fake public domain. Still much better than permissive licenses that just pretend copyright doesn't exist without actually abolishing it. Others are only too happy to take advantage of their generosity by going all rights reserved.
    - pabs3 1y ago
      > distinguish free software and open source software The movements are different sure, but when it comes to acceptable licenses, they are pretty much equivalent. Sounds like you are talking about licenses people common associate with each movement though. I agree there is somewhat of a dichotomy, although I feel like at the beginning open source was a bit more of a copyleft thing, and became more associated with permissive/pushover licenses later when GitHub became popular and Big Tech steered folks towards those licenses. > Competitors launching a service based on free software isn't the real issue. It is for the companies who are adopting the AGPLv3 in an attempt to be seen as "real open source" again. They don't actually care about users, except to the extent they can get cash from them, to pay back their vulture capitalist funders. > It's all about us, the users of the software. Developers don't really matter. Sure, as far as licenses etc go, but developers have to matter to some extent, otherwise you get unmaintained/buggy/nonexistent software. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ > Copyright is a lost cause. In a world without copyright law, there would still be proprietary trade secret software, and Free Software. I see the Free Software movement as aspiring to providing a high level of equality of access to a work between both the original author and far downstream recipients. The license is only one aspect of that, the other is the source code, without which you can't have equivalent access to the author. The form that source comes in also matters, since there are forms that can only be modified with proprietary software, and forms that discard information (like machine code exectuables, or lossy video encoding). https://wiki.debian.org/AutoGeneratedFiles https://wiki.debian.org/AutoGeneratedFiles > I advocate for its abolition. That would remove the one possibility of GPL enforcement that we have, since I assume we aren't going to resort to kneecapping violators when copyright goes away :) Perhaps there would be other non-violent tactics like boycott campaigns or trademarks to mark ethical software that could be effective. We should be doing those now too though, and are to some extent.

by pabs3 1y ago

matheusmoreira 1y ago

> The AGPLv3 is pretty easy for the corporations to comply with > they just have to either use the unmodified code, or give their users access to the modified code If it's so easy, then why don't they? Why do they treat it as legal kryptonite? > You have to go to non-FOSS licenses if you want to change where the money goes I agree with you. That's why I said "AGPLv3 or all rights reserved". I don't necessarily want to change where the money goes though. It's about having the power to do whatever you want as the user of the software and especially as the owner of the computer that's running it. AGPLv3 is simply the license that allows us to give away software while retaining the most possible leverage. Open source licenses just give it all away for literally nothing. > but even that won't help, because if you get popular enough they will just use their giant amount of devs to re-implement your stuff and then beat you at marketing That's okay. Spending one's own time and money on something is not exploitative in any way. They could also negotiate exceptions to the GPL with the copyright holders. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

pabs3 1y ago
Probably cautious lawyers, maybe cargo-culting, hard to tell. Some more discussion of why they don't in this LWN thread: https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/ FTR, AGPLv3 is considered an Open Source license, perhaps you meant permissive/pushover licenses when you said "Open source licenses just give it all away for literally nothing". Also, permissive licenses have conditions too, although they are easy to comply with, violations of them are still quite common, as they are for GPL-family licenses. Deliberately going out of your way to put a smaller company out of business seems like shitty behavior to me. I also wonder about the anti-trust angle; Big Tech using their oligopoly in the developer labour market to kill startups that could become competitors. I never really bought the idea that selling exceptions is ethical, probably better to downgrade to LGPL instead.
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  > FTR, AGPLv3 is considered an Open Source license I distinguish free software and open source software due to their different historical roots and values. I also distinguish licenses based on user/developer centrality. Free software licenses are primarily about users. Permissive licenses are all about developer convenience. > permissive licenses have conditions too, although they are easy to comply with It's easy to comply with the AGPLv3 as well. They just have to share source code under the same license and make sure we can use it. They don't want to comply. They want to keep their code secret. They want to find little loopholes to get out of the contract. They want to create controlled "platforms", corporate digital fiefdoms where only their software can run. They want to limit our freedom and impose their will on us. Competitors launching a service based on free software isn't the real issue. The problem is being unable to self-host this stuff on our own computers because they control the software and the hardware. It's all about us, the users of the software. Developers don't really matter. > violations of them are still quite common, as they are for GPL-family licenses People infringe copyright on a daily basis. It's completely normal. They often do not even realize they're doing it. Happens to proprietary software too. Copyright is a lost cause. I advocate for its abolition. Only reason copyleft licenses exist at all is to try to twist copyright into a fake public domain. Still much better than permissive licenses that just pretend copyright doesn't exist without actually abolishing it. Others are only too happy to take advantage of their generosity by going all rights reserved.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    > distinguish free software and open source software The movements are different sure, but when it comes to acceptable licenses, they are pretty much equivalent. Sounds like you are talking about licenses people common associate with each movement though. I agree there is somewhat of a dichotomy, although I feel like at the beginning open source was a bit more of a copyleft thing, and became more associated with permissive/pushover licenses later when GitHub became popular and Big Tech steered folks towards those licenses. > Competitors launching a service based on free software isn't the real issue. It is for the companies who are adopting the AGPLv3 in an attempt to be seen as "real open source" again. They don't actually care about users, except to the extent they can get cash from them, to pay back their vulture capitalist funders. > It's all about us, the users of the software. Developers don't really matter. Sure, as far as licenses etc go, but developers have to matter to some extent, otherwise you get unmaintained/buggy/nonexistent software. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ > Copyright is a lost cause. In a world without copyright law, there would still be proprietary trade secret software, and Free Software. I see the Free Software movement as aspiring to providing a high level of equality of access to a work between both the original author and far downstream recipients. The license is only one aspect of that, the other is the source code, without which you can't have equivalent access to the author. The form that source comes in also matters, since there are forms that can only be modified with proprietary software, and forms that discard information (like machine code exectuables, or lossy video encoding). https://wiki.debian.org/AutoGeneratedFiles https://wiki.debian.org/AutoGeneratedFiles > I advocate for its abolition. That would remove the one possibility of GPL enforcement that we have, since I assume we aren't going to resort to kneecapping violators when copyright goes away :) Perhaps there would be other non-violent tactics like boycott campaigns or trademarks to mark ethical software that could be effective. We should be doing those now too though, and are to some extent.