Slashdot Mirror

Hmmm .... its distributed social network software and its aGPL. That means any user who tinkers with the source is in the mandatory-software-distribution business to his social network (hopefully, this does not mean anyone who sends in a friend request.)

I'm no Facebook shill, and would like something like OpenSocial or Diaspora let us take charge of our own data, but... I'd prefer Diaspora was MIT or BSD or even GPLv2 licensed. Guys: I hope you dual-license it.

"We promise to you that Diaspora will be aGPL software which will released at the end of the summer."
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program....[provided]
* d) If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work.
http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html

That passage is in the version 1 of the license, proudly displayed e.g. on http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html but not in the version 3 of the license, available for example at http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html. On the first page there is this notice

"Note: The GNU Affero General Public License version 3 has been released. It follows the same basic structure as this license, but it is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL, and you can combine modules released under GPLv3 and the GNU AGPLv3. If you were thinking about releasing your software under this license, we recommend you use the GNU AGPLv3 instead."

It was an interesting point you brought up but fortunately it's been addressed.

AGPL

This is the loophole that the new license GPL variant (whose name I forgot at the moment) is trying to close.
You mean the AGPL.

RMS founded FSF to protect computer users. GPL protected users until the proliferation of the Web made it possible to run a modified program on a network without revealing the source. The new AGPLv3 not only protects users but it also protects Web 2.0 businesses. For example, if I release the code of a blog site under GPL then I run the risk of a competitor improving the code to run a better site without revealing their source. But with AGPLv3, businesses can now safely release the code of their Web 2.0 sites without worrying about competitors. This creates a technological equality in the marketplace where the most successful sites will be those offering the best customer care, or the most sane privacy policies etc, which is actually what matters most in a Web business. How many times did you feel you had to use the services of a site which you disliked some of their policies but offered some features (ie technology) not present in competing sites? If competitors get to compete on customer care and the quality of offered products rather than technical features, then this will be good for the marketplace overall. Furthermore, with the greater adoption of Web 2.0, more and more of your software is going to be network-based, so at some point in the future instead of Matlab, Photoshop, and SPSS you will simply access a website. How would you feel if your mathematical and statistical calculations were done by software which you could not verify their source code because it is hidden behind the network? What if a future voting platform uses networked software? What if all future computers work with a network OS? Users get no protection when their software inner workings are hidden behind a network. AGPLv3 is one of the most wonderful developments in copyleft (but of course credit has to go Affero as well for conceiving the first Affero licence), and I actually immediately started offering generous discounts to any client of my software consulting business willing to release the resulting work under AGPLv3, and actually my discount rate for AGPLv3 is higher than that of classic GPL.

Disclaimer: I am a Contributing Member of the FSF.

13. Use with the GNU Affero General Public License.

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the special requirements of the GNU Affero General Public License, section 13, concerning interaction through a network will apply to the combination as such.

So many comments posted thus far, and nothing about Affero. You can't discuss what free software in a "WebOS" (what a horrible term) means without bringing this up. The fundamental point is that the GPL allows anyone modification without no restrictions or obligations as long as you don't distribute the software to other people. Distribution is generally interpreted as different than running it. Basically, if you GPL a PHP driven website, anyone can take it, modify it, give other users access to "running" it without distributing any changes you've made.

As best I can tell, the Affero license addresses this, by a clause partnered with specific functionality in the program. 'If this software came with functionality to give source code to users, you may not remove it.' or something to that effect. I've already seen one or two sites that have decided that it didn't apply to them, and the development community behind it sounded like "so what?" Which is fine I suppose, but it feels strange to me that they were able to make a site for a client based largely on existing OAGPL'd code, integrate the code with existing technology(that is also widely used and would be interesting to many people), fix bugs, and then turn around and declare yourself unable and unrequired to fulfill the obligations imposed on you by the agreement. This is compounded by the fact that generally its much harder to tell when a site is appropriating OAGPL'd code. With traditional software, strings will usually catch hidden strings, debugging statements etc. Web software only has the output to look at.

I am somewhat comforted by the fact their site is already out of date, so either they or their client will be facing increasing costs in maintaining the site.

Web apps non-modifiable?

The source code that generated that HTML might not be modifiable. The php scripts of a GPL'd website can be modified by someone else and not have to redistribute the source because they aren't distributing the modified source. they have it sitting on some server somewhere not copying itself. Most web-apps don't even release their source code.. see digg.com, del.icio.us, gmail, etc. That's why there are open source equivalents of these.. respectively: pligg, scuttle, and the Hula Project

Brett Smith of the FSF just email me today to notify me of the Affero General Public License, which requires the source code of the site to be available to anyone who receives content generated by the site.

Look at the Affero General Public License. Contrary to what some people are saying, the GPLv3 will not contain such provisions, but it will be compatible with licences that include it.

Web services are not covered directly in the license, but are now made compatible through subsection 7d. If this draft is adopted, the AGPL will be compatible with the GPL, and those authors who wish derivatives to remain free will be able to secure that freedom through the use of other licenses like the AGPL (which has been endorsed by the FSF).

Under subsection 7d, the added part may require the program to contain functioning facilities that allow users to obtain copies of the program's Complete Corresponding Source Code. This is intended to enable compatibility with licensing terms that, for example, require modified versions of a program that interacts with users through a network to preserve an opportunity for users to request network transmission of the source code.

The Affero license has been "testing" the Web Services clause for a while.

The problem for Free Software purists is that it's a EULA: It restricts use, not just copying. That seems to contradict the "not a contract" part of the GPL, and probably can't be enforced in many jurisidctions (although it is a way of fighting back against UCITA or similar laws / court decisions that make EULAs binding).

2. d) If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work.

There has been a lot of talk about giving the GPL v3 provisions similar to the Affero General Public License, which some see as limiting your freedom to run the software.

The AGPL requires that if the program interacts with users through a network, and is capable of distributing its own source code, this ability must be retained in modified versions. (The clause very specifically applies to networks and requires that HTTP be used as the transfer protocol, which seems to me to be a bit too narrow-minded to be used in a license that will still be applicable 50 years from now, but anyway...)

It's not clear to me whether the AGPL actually limits your ability to modify and use a program "in-house." But consider the two possibilities.

(A) If it does, then clearly this violates freedom zero. It's also worth mentioning that the GPL, and thus the AGPL, explicitly state that the act of running the program is outside their scope. Moreover, it could only work if the user were forced to sign it (i.e., make it into a EULA) since it limits freedoms that were never covered by copyright law. This is in direct contradiction to the spirit of section 5.

(B) But if it doesn't, then the license is completely worthless, and you've just broken GPL compatiblity and added all sorts of ugly legal issues for no reason at all!

Why do I say this? Well, clearly you can distribute the AGPLed program in unmodified form; that's section 1. You can also distribute patches against it which remove its source-code-distribution function; if you write those patches yourself, you can distribute them under any terms you want. Finally, you can distribute a script to patch, compile, and install the modified program. The resulting binary, of course, is illegal to distribute, but the components aren't.

IANAL, so I can't say which of the two interpretations is correct, but neither one sounds very appealing.

This has been tackled by the AGPL which will be upwards compatible with GPL v3 - in other words, GPL v3 will have a clause that requires release of the source code as soon as a program is used outside an organisation, not just when the program itself is distributed.

It will, I think, still be possible for an organisation to make changes to software that remains internal without releasing the changes. In other words, the distribution takes effect as soon as the program is made available for use to an outside party.

Olson should know. He is one of a select few looking to review the current GPL and recommend updates for the public review process, which he says should happen before the end of the year.

Being forced to distribute ANYTHING when you are just USING the software, however, is too ornerous to be tolerated.

Some people tolerate it already (scroll down to section 2d).

The Affero GPL is a modification of GPLv2 that requires all users to be provided the source, even if they only execute the program remotely. RMS has stated an interest in this provision, and was at least considering putting something along those lines into GPLv3. Whether that is still under discussion or not, I don't know (GPLv3 drafts don't seem to be publically released).

The concept obviously introduces all kinds of confusing and far-reaching implications: the line between users and non-users of a certain piece of software is difficult to draw. If my ISP's router runs Linux, am I "using" Linux when I view this webpage on Windows XP??

It is time for software developers to donate potential patents to the FSF. If copyright is no longer a defense against one's code being ripped off by commersial competitors. Microsoft must be secretly wishing that this guy wins his case.

Perhaps, also the Gallery of CSS Descramblers could come is useful. Greg Aharonian's filing is taramount to saying that code is not speech, after all.

1. can think of any ways to really improve on it
2. wants to hastily change it lest they somehow damage its legal watertightness ("if it ain't broke don't fix it").

However, there is now talk of releasing a new version (GNU GPL 3.0) and maybe a first draft of the new version sometime "soon" (in terms of it's slow development cycle--some people are bandying around 2006 as a possible date). There is no draft ATM but possible changes that have been talked about in the past include:

1. an anti-DMCA clause;
2. clarification of the section on granting patent licenses (and better protection against algorithmic patents in general);
3. possibly something about trusted/trecherous computing to stop free software being effectively shackled by that technology;
4. possibly allowing the offer of source code for binaries without source to refer to a URI where it can be downloaded (as opposed to the out-dated snail-mail method);
5. clarification (and possible tightening) of "as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed...with the major components...of the operating system on which the executable runs..." to close the loophole that people could argue quite a wide defintion of "major components of OS";
6. most significantly, a new clause saying that source code must be available to users who use the software remotely over a network (e.g.: the Internet). [See the relevant official GNU-GPL FAQ and section 2(d) of the Affero GPL (which is very similar to what the FSF are considering for the new GNU-GPL clause).]

See this FSF presentation and NewsFourge's two-part article interviewing RMS for more background--neither recent. Those are the main official sources I could find.

I'm sure a public draft will be released for discussion some time before anything gets finalised.

By the way, to my untrained eye the Affero GPL (an alternative license suggested by GNU themselves) sucks. Section 2a reads:

If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work.

Gigantic loopholes include:

• The use of the phrase "any user" at the beginning of this run-on sentence is ambiguous. Does that mean "at least one user" ("Did you see any deer?") or "each and every user" ("Any programmer could read this")? I assume they meant the former, but if I wanted to rip off code under this license, I'd ask my lawyer to argue the latter.
• Q: "[M]ust offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code"? A: 403 - request denied. It doesn't say you actually have to honor the request; you just have to allow them to make the request.

I think I understand what they're trying to do, but again, is it a good idea? Does anyone have a good idea about how to really accomplish it? Are there any licenses right now that don't have the glaring holes of the Affero GPL?

The FSF has been working with Affero to address this issue. Check out the list of GPL-incompatible free software licenses under the section called "Affero General Public License" which says:

The Affero General Public License is a free software license, copyleft, and incompatible with the GNU GPL. It consists of the GNU GPL version 2, with one additional section that Affero added with FSF approval. The new section, 2(d), covers the distribution of application programs through web services or computer networks. The Affero GPL is incompatible with the GNU GPL version 2 because of section 2(d); however, the section is written so that we can make GNU GPL version 3 upward compatible with the Affero GPL. That is why we gave our approval for Affero to modify the GNU GPL in this way.

The Affero General Public License is online as well. I'm sure both organizations would welcome your feedback.

The AGPL does this. It's a prototype for GPLv3, upwards compatible with it when it comes out.

According to this slide the Affero GPL is a prototype.

Q: How does this license treat commercial enterprise use over intranets and internal networks?
A: Simply, if run internally to a commercial company, then the company isn't required to release source code back to the world. The license requires that if a user downloads the source they have the right to make improvements and not release these modifications. GNU GPL software in general addresses this issue the same way. If an employee has access to the source and has the right to make improvements, the commercial entity could probably view this work as work for hire and owned by the company and not have to be released outside.

The AGPL is a GNU recognized free software license.

It's essentially a modified GPL - with a "running this software over a network constitutes distribution" clause.

Very cool - I had no idea this was around - might be worth some Free Software developers jumping onto until GPL v3 comes out (which will have a similar clause).

For those who have no idea what I'm going on about - read devchannel's explanation: Closing the GPL's distibution loophole

Comparing anything to perfection is unproductive; it serves to reinforce our biases by presenting us with a false dichotomy (you can have whatever argument is being proposed or you can have perfection, which is never available). Let's look at specific claims.

As much as there are some FSF fans wish that the GPL was the only software license [...]

Please name who these people are and cite the evidence that gives you this impression.

[...] it's not the one-size-fits-all solution for everybody. That's why the LGPL exists. That's why Creative Commons exists. That's why many common open-source programs have forked the GPL to make it their own.

That explanation barely gets into why the LGPL exists. The Creative Commons doesn't recommend their licenses for software. The GNU project started over a decade before the open source movement began and the GNU project was founded to talk about software freedom, not a development methodology. I'd also be interested to learn who, besides the Affero General Public License has "forked" the GNU GPL. The Creative Commons has listed the GNU GPL, not forked it.

[...] but let's not treat the GPL like it's a religion. It's not perfect.

Who, exactly, is doing this and what, exactly, are they saying?

"It would be interesting to see a project allow those who donate to vote on what the money went towards."

Haven't you joined Affero lately?

Seriously, Affero is an interesting concept, whereby your helpful code, suggestions, usenet posts, emails, etc. can be rated by people within the community that benefit from that help, and donations given by those individuals gets contributed to the organizations of their choice. The developer/user themselves gets 0% of the donation, 100% of it goes to other organizations, such as the FSF, EFF, Software Libre, and so on.

If this has helped you in any way, please take the time to rate the value of this post: http://rate.affero.net/hacker/

But that's just it, my employer does not "give" me the binaries.

They do "give" it to you (English definition), just like they "give" you many tools, although neither employee nor boss expects him to keep permanent possession- but that's not the point. Office furniture, computer hardware- they're physical goods. Whoever bought them can transfer them wherever he wants, but there's no law against copying them, since that's impossible.

When giving software to employees, however, the employer will have committed an act of copyright violation, unless he abides by the license. And if the license is the GPL, that means that anyone with access to the binaries can freely spread them far and wide.

Imagine if someone from the corporate IT department is called to the witness stand:

"Fred, did you on the date of March 1st, distribute or cause to be distributed to your co-employees Carol, Betty, and Alice, the software labelled exhibit A, which you have already admitted contains substantial portions of the plaintiff's source code?"

Fred cannot honestly deny he "distributed" the code. Then the only question is, was he violating copyright when he did so? Or, in doing so, had he consented to the GPL? In the first case, "Go directly to punitive damages". In the second case, Carol, Betty, and Alice are free to pass out further GPLed copies to the 4 corners of the earth.

The software installed on the computer remains the property of my employer

It was never the property of the employer. It belongs to the author and copyright holder the entire time.

The employer had permission to use it under certain conditions. If the software was GPL, those conditions included never restricting anyone from sharing copies of the software.

And I'm envisioning a kiosk that would be set up in a public place to say give directions to anyone who wishes to use it. By the definition of user you are attempting to assert, I would.

No, because the kiosk user doesn't have access to the filesystem. An employee of a corporation does. Maybe not the end-user who runs the program each day, but the IT dept who installed it certainly does.

And anyway, the FSF is considering extending the GPL to ensure that the user is entitled to the source code even if he's using a program running on someone else's computer. That won't matter for a while yet, though. (An example of a license that moves towards this goal is here)

but I think the same case law that allows a software publisher to go after a business that has illegal copies of software installed on the businesses systems governs here.

That is a more general thing, and relates to the definition of incorporation. If a crime is committed by a person acting on behalf of a corporation, liablity will be assessed against the corp. as a whole, rather than against any person within it.

But, laws like that only shift around who gets punished for any particular offense. It doesn't change what things are illegal for a corporation to do, which includes everything a private citizen can't do, and more.

So in my example of Fred above, if he turns out to be guilty, the corporation will pay the damages, if he was acting under their orders.

Proposed, as in proposed by Matt Harris. And notice how it basically exempts kernel modules from being derivative works? That's because Lineo wants to make proprietary kernel modules.

If you want to see where the FSF is going for GPL v3, try the Affero license.