GNU's Affero General Public License (AGPLv3)

[Arc Riley]

Thanks Martin.  Unfortunetly the debian-legal thread has grown to such a
size that it's difficult for readers to find this information so I'll repeat
it here:

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 4:25 AM, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 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)


The AGPLv3 section 13 does not require you to host the modified code on your
server, only "a network server".  Free code-hosting services including
Launchpad, Savannah, Gna!, and Sourceforge are more than sufficient.

For small changes a pastebin and/or a mailing list should also be
sufficient.


  I'm required to publish the full source for a two line patch,
>   instead of just publishing the patch?


Note the text in section 13; "through some standard or customary means of
facilitating copying of software."  It is very customary to provide a diff
when your modification is a two-line patch, and thus this is more than
sufficient.

Also note that, in such a case, an email to an archived mailing list with a
URL pointed to that message would be sufficient by the letter and spirit of
the license.  Nobody wants license compliance to become a burden, we
obviously want to keep things as simple and flexible as possible.  I believe
this is why the FSF/SFLC used this flexible language for how the software
should be hosted rather than specify a protocol or format.

What we do not want to see is the "ASP loophole" used as a workaround to
compete against us with improved, privately modified web services.  This is
a requirement for many projects to release their code at all and thus
enrichens the body of free software available.


They will certainly not bother to read each and every license of their
> installed products and check for these kinds of additional usage
> restrictions.


(A)GPLv3 section 4 and 5b require the license of the work to be prominent,
section 5d requires any UI present to make this very clear and noticable.

Of course mistakes will be made, a license overlooked, this happens
already.  If a project is not in compliance a simple notification email is
all that should be needed, same as with the GPL.
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