I note that this definitely wouldn't comply with the FSD/OSD/DFSG, because it means you are forcing people to communicate source to people they aren't communicating with, for whatever reason; such as because they are a dissident, or on a desert island, or in a domestic violence situation, or in a warzone etc.
## What about the Debian "Political Dissident" test?
See the above. Pretty much the same thing. Again, if I can find some
wording to exempt individuals from the distribution requirement who would
otherwise be put at clear risk to their human rights by state or corporate
actors, then I'll add such wording.
This license seems to specifically take aim at RHEL's new source distribution policy. Are we as a community okay with allowing this to happen, because Red Hat is adhering to the letter of the GPL and the FSD/OSD/DFSG?
Are those definitions unassailable truisms that are not up for debate? Are the authors arguments in favor of his own license not worth rebutting directly on the merits?
> ## Have you any legal background, are your changes sound?
> No I do not, and I have no idea.
> I would greatly prefer to have a legal professional draft these changes. In
lieu of that, I have tried to approach this by combining existing
professionally drafted texts, and minimised adding my own wording.
It’s an interesting idea for a license but no one should use this until it’s been reviewed by a competent lawyer.
We definitely need something like this. Not sure if this is it, as I, like the author, am not a lawyer. I'd need technology lawyers to analyze it for me. So although it doesn't add anything substantive to the HN discussion, I'd like to voice my approval for any efforts made towards a strong license in this spirit.
I am a non-practicing lawyer who has moved on to other things and even still, I would never draft a software license because it wasn't remotely my field.
Either you need someone who can take the time to learn all of the ins and outs and knows how to apply it, including the international ones, or you can find someone who knows that stuff by heart.
I think this is meant to be the IBM / RHEL antidote licence in spirit. Makes sense. However, it isn't clear what should / would happen if the website you host your code on disappears. Would tricksters at IBM simply claim that their website which hosts the code has been undergoing maintenance for a year? At the other end of the spectrum, would litigious slime sue a maintainer if github is down for 5 minutes? "Publicly available" probably needs more rigorous legal definition.
>> I think this is meant to be the IBM / RHEL antidote licence in spirit. Makes sense.
You mean RH only releasing source to paying customers who have agreed though other arrangements not to share it? That's a GPL violation waiting for a court case.
Which is a red flag. The AGPL was basically designed to be the strongest possible copyleft FOSS license. When people try to make even stronger ones, they usually end up making something that's neither free nor open source (e.g., the SSPL), and that's exactly what ended up happening here.
> When people try to make even stronger ones, they usually end up making something that's neither free nor open source
"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
The FSF's stewardship of copyleft has led us to the current status quo, where the GPLv2 is still incredibly common compared to v3, the AGPL is considered niche, and it seems most developers these days prefer permissive licenses anyway.
These kinds of new licenses are exactly the breath of fresh air we need. If the existing free software/open source dogma says they're bad, maybe it's the dogma that's wrong.
"You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Software with other code
not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work
as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements
of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Software."
Seems to imply you can use a library distributed under this licence and not release the entire program source?
Looks like a big gaping hole of ambiguity to me. A vague attempt at license compatibility. You don't get to impose terms on code under another license, and WTF does "the requirements of this license are fulfilled" without saying the result must be covered by this license? It's nonsense. There is no room here for "you know what I mean" because at best I think I know what they wish could be, but even if I'm right the details are absent.
2. Section 13's title is changed from "Use with the GNU Affero General Public License" to "Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License" and this is inserted before its first paragraph:
> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
3. Some more is added about how the two licenses work with each other.
The whole point of AGPL is to deal with users interactive with the program (but only remotely over computer networks...if they are interacting remotely with it but not via a computer network or if they are interacting locally then AGPL is effectively GPL).
You download a FOPL version of something like cron. You make some changes to this code and run it on your internal servers to schedule some business process.
Even though this software, not even the server, even catches a whiff of the internet, since the software has been “Deployed” for a commercial use case, the company is obliged to make the changes to the code publicly available.
Simply, this license expands the distribution concept to commercial use, whether anyone else ever encounters it or not.
Don't make any more open source or Free Software licenses. All the bases are covered and any code under yet another license just raises questions and prevent sharing between projects.
Copyleft is a noble but failed endeavor. None of this legal voodoo changes the facts on the ground with the big tech oligopoly's control of the keystone infrastructure.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#fs-definition https://opensource.org/osd https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines https://wiki.debian.org/DissidentTest https://wiki.debian.org/DesertIslandTest https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html