

Google Code Project Hosting relaxes license policy - kadhinn
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/09/license-evolution-and-hosting-projects.html

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shaddi
Certainly a change of heart -- we were trying to host an AGPL project on
Google Code in 2008 and were told to find a new host or face deletion. There
was a discussion that got a bit heated in fact, with with Chris DiBona at one
point calling the AGPL "deeply flawed".

[http://groups.google.com/group/google-code-
hosting/browse_th...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-code-
hosting/browse_thread/thread/1714c5c0ef5d9f9f/a985013e626cc1ba)

~~~
tzs
He's right that is is deeply flawed. In no particular order:

1\. It violates the FSF's "Free Software Definition". Freedom 0 is the freedom
to run the program for any purpose. They explain this as:

    
    
        The freedom to run the program means the freedom
        for any kind of person or organization to use it
        on any kind of computer system, for any kind of
        overall job and purpose, without being required to
        communicate about it with the developer or any
        other specific entity. In this freedom, it is
        the user's purpose that matters, not the
        developer's purpose; you as a user are free
        to run the program for your purposes, and if
        you distribute it to someone else, she is then
        free to run it for her purposes, but you are
        not entitled to impose your purposes on her.
    

If I, as a user, wish to run an AGPL program as a daemon on my system to
generate forms that get presented to customers and that processes the input
the customers type into the forms, I'm the user. AGPL requires that I
communicate about the program with the customers. This violates Freedom 0.

2\. It seems at odds with #10 of the OSI Open Source Definition ("No provision
of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of
interface").

3\. It prohibits something that is allowed by copyright law. Pretty much every
other free/open license is based on granting permission for you to do things
that would not be allowed under copyright law, without requiring you to give
up any of your rights allowed by copyright as the owner of a particular copy
lawfully made. To put it succinctly, AGPL is a EULA.

That the FSF accepted AGPL shows a major breakdown in their idealism.

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obsessive1
I've had a project under the AGPL for a while now, and it always annoyed me
that Google Code wouldn't support the license.

It's good to see them stepping forward to allow the use of these newer
licenses on the site.

------
ritonlajoie
Well, this guy invented TL;DR, <http://www.reddit.com/user/qgyh2>

"....the TL;DR version is that we think we've....."

~~~
RossM
I'm not sure how that's relevant but as an aside qgyh2 was a project where a
large number of users used the account to post (I haven't got a source and I
know it sounds myth-y but it's what I've read).

