Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org wrote:
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com writes:
This sounds a really trolly question, so I apologise in advance :) How do you square freedom zero with your previous statement about restricting public use to those people willing to distribute source?
*You* can use AGPL'd code for any purpose, but making it available for others to use is not *you* using it for a purpose, so it's not a freedom zero issue.
The practice of "making it available for others to use" is more similar to "giving copies to others", which the GPL has always attached requirements to.
no?
No, the GPL hasn't always attached requirements to "making it available for others to use". GPLv2 even forbids attaching such requirements IIRC. GPLv3 seems to allow them by mixing with AGPLv3.
Batch processing services predate the GPL and I used to have access to applications through high performance computing services batch processing at university, but the GPL didn't place additional restrictions on them. I shudder to think how expensive they would have been if each user could have demanded the source from the HPC service in the same medium as the results. At best, I think HPC would have needed restructuring to cope with such licence terms.
The internet doesn't really change this landscape - it just makes such remote processing services easier and faster.
Personally, I object to the limit on the freedom to adapt the program to our needs (freedom one) rather than the freedom to run as an ASP.
But then, attaching onerous extras to useful output happened in the GNU FDL too, so I guess we could see that FSF were heading in the wrong direction long before the AGPLv3 added a non-free exit to the GPL.
Ciaran claimed that whether AGPL is a free software licence "is a judgement call the free software community will have to make" - does this mean the FSF will not require its projects to accept the AGPL or require them to allow AGPL-compatibility?
Does anyone think that FDL's acceptability has been left entirely to the free software community? I'm expecting FSF to continue using its leadership's disproportionate weight to get AGPL accepted by a wide audience, despite probably being another non-free-software licence.
Regards,