[freeside-devel] Comments on the AGPL (and other licenses?) that close the "webapp" loophole

[DPH]

I think being able to hook up with packages such as RT and SQL-Ledger 
is more important than closing loopholes. Companies and individuals 
will always modify and use code without reciprocating. Sometimes it's 
more trouble than it's worth, other times they're just tying to get 
something for nothing. The important thing is that they don't try to 
claim freeside as their own and distribute as a proprietary package.


On Aug 19, 2004, at 7:23 AM, ivan wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Lately I've been thinking about switching to a license such as the
> "Affero GPL".  The "Affero GPL" is a license based on the GPL that
> "closes the web services loophole", like the someday-forthcoming GPLv3.
> One good summary of the AGPL is available at
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/3/20/154118/890
>
> I want Freeside to be free for everyone to use and modify, but I don't
> feel it is equitable to our community for large companies to fork
> private versions of the software and run them in a VISP capacity to
> avoid having to make the source code of their derivitive works
> available.  This seems to violate the spirit of the GPL, if not the
> letter (hence why it is called a "loophole").
>
> This isn't a purely theoretical concern; at least one large wholesale
> dial/VISP provider has run a private fork of Freeside for many years,
> but has never made any of their modifications available.
>
> If we adopted the AGPL license, no one could do this in the future, and
> this company would not able to benefit from future community
> improvements in Freeside unless they made their own changes available 
> to
> the community.
>
> Several of the developers from this company are on the list - please
> introduce yourselves and let us know your thoughts.
>
> On the down-side, it may be more difficult to "borg" external codebases
> such as RT and SQL-Ledger.  There's also the possibility that the AGPL
> license would alienate potential contributors who would perceive it as
> non-free - if anyone here would feel that way about contributing to
> AGPL-licensed software, please share your thoughts.  As a data point,
> although endorsed as a free license by the FSF and OSI, Debian still
> seems undecided on whether the AGPL is DFSG-free.
>
> Kristian, Jeff, any other folks who have made substantial contribution,
> I'm especially keen to know your thoughts.  Do you feel this is
> consistant with the spririt under which you contributed code to the
> software and would you be okay with AGPL relicensing?
>
> -- 
> _ivan
>