Your message dated Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:42:09 +0100
with message-id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and subject line AGPL and Debian
has caused the Debian Bug report #495721,
regarding ftp.debian.org: Is AGPLv3 DFSG-free?
to be marked as done.
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495721: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=495721
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: ftp.debian.org
Severity: wishlist
GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPLv3) [1] is a license
published by the Free Software Foundation targeted towards
web and server network applications. It is almost equal to the
GPLv3 license except for this clause:
13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the
Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users
interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version
supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding
Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source
from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary
means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source
shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3
of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the
following paragraph.
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 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 work with which it is combined will remain governed by version
3 of the GNU General Public License.
This clause has important implications, the most important ones -in my
opinion- being:
1) It can might add a cost to the usage of the software that restricts
its usage.
2) It might forbid private usage of software that uses any kind of
network.
3) It might contaminate unrelated software.
The most relevant messages about this topic in debian-devel up to now
have been:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00045.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/09/msg00032.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00380.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00053.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00056.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00057.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00060.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00063.html
Thanks and greetings,
Miry
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hi,
recently we, your mostly friendly Ftpmaster and -team, have been asked
about an opinion about the AGPL in Debian.
The short summary is: We think that works licensed under the AGPL can
go into main. (Provided they don't have any other problems).
Reason:
The concerns people have expressed with regard to this license relate to
the only ยง in it which is different to the GPL:
|| 13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
Citing the three main concerns from Bug #495721:
> 1) It can might add a cost to the usage of the software that restricts
> its usage.
[this is also raised in #506042]
We do not think that this is a severe enough problem to restrict the
freeness of a work licensed using the AGPL.
- Offering a publically accessible network service already comes with a
cost that might be hard to calculate. Think about DDOS attacks for
example.
- For practical matters the distribution costs via the internet are
close to zero for free software. While bandwidth does cost money, and
having a (say) 20MB app downloaded a million times would create a
large cost, the license text reads "from a network server at no
charge". This means it is not required to be your own server, so you
can use any of the free services, like Alioth, Savannah, SourceForge,
Launchpad or Google Code. While those are only there for Free
Software - that is the case for AGPL applications.
Considering those points, the requirement to make the source available
does not seem to be one which restricts the usage of the software in any
way related to us and the DFSG.
> 2) It might forbid private usage of software that uses any kind of
> network.
We do not see that it would forbid the private usage of the software. If
you use the software privately, the users of that software are a pretty
limited group. And as soon as they can reach your system to use the
software that means they are able to either download the source from your
private server or get a link to a download location on a machine
accessible to them.
Why might it forbid the private usage of software? Section 13 only
requires to offer the source to the users of your service. As such you
only need to give it to the limited user set your private usage has.
Also, we tend to agree with the FSFs opinion that a client does not need
to provide you access to the source of the servers it interacts with, see
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AGPLv3ServerAsUser
> 3) It might contaminate unrelated software.
We aren't sure that this is much different to the "normal" GPL. It is a
copyleft license after all. So unless someone declares the GPL non-free
thanks to that, we disagree with applying it to the AGPL.
In conclusion we will continue to access AGPL works into main subject to
the rest of the checks that we also normally perform.
--
bye, Joerg
Could you please add me to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] alias. I'm not receiving
enough spam.
-- Andrew Pollock
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