GNU's Affero General Public License (AGPLv3)

[Martin Pitt]

Hi all,

Matthew East [2008-09-04  8:28 +0100]:
> I'm copying in ubuntu-archive for their information / comments.
> 
> On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 2:15 PM, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 08:19:53AM +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> >> My view is that the AGPLv3 is a free license and I would have no
> >> reservations about supporting the main / universe inclusion of an AGPLv3
> >> package.
> >
> > I am of the same opinion.

I read the diff between GPL v3 and the AGPL v3 only, I haven't dug
through the debian-legal@ thread yet. My first kneejerk reaction is:

 * I consider it a free license by the letter of the DFSG.

 * I do not consider it free by the DFSG spirit, though, since it is
   IMHO a stupid license. It is at the same time too demanding
   (requiring me to set up an Apache server for hosting code if I just
   change a bit in my squirrelmail setup for users on my server), as
   well as waaay to underdefined (is a random user coming to my
   https://mail.piware.de squirrelmail instance, but not being able to
   login entitled to get the modified source? what is a remote user
   anyway?)

   I'm required to publish the full source for a two line patch,
   instead of just publishing the patch? That's stupid and useless for
   both me as the hoster, and for users who want to see what I
   modified.

This would discourage me from locally modifyng a server application
under this license (like a web mailer or an IRC proxy), since doing so
would be too inconvenient and costly.

It also comes as a surprising element, since so far users of
Ubuntu/Debian could rely on the terms of usage and got a certain
expectation/"common law" how to run their servers with free software.
They will certainly not bother to read each and every license of their
installed products and check for these kinds of additional usage
restrictions.

So the biggest problem I see with it is clearly communicating this
additional restriction to users of the software. I don't see a problem
with accepting AGPL 3.0 software into main/universe.

Martin

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)
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