I moved the discussion to debian-vote where it belongs. (please CC me). On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 06:05:25PM +0000, Mike Hommey wrote: > On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 11:45:25PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote: > > Again, this is not the language that the AGPL uses. It requires that > > "your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with > > it remotely through a computer network" the source. Notice the text > > "your modified version". It's not acceptable to offer it out-of-band. > > Also, it says "all users". That means anyone who calls connect(2), > > whether they can authenticate or not. POP can't do that. Neither can > > DNS. Those protocols almost never have any indication to the user that > > they are working. Most users don't even know that they're there. > > > > This doesn't even mention the situation for HTTP, where it could be > > interpreted to mean that every response requires a modification of the > > data in some way so that the user can be offered the source, since the > > header is not displayed to the user, let alone "prominently". > > Stupid question: with this wording of the AGPL, who, in his right mind, > will be licensing a DNS or POP server under this license ? (Except maybe > someone who didn't read it)
This is a good question and there are two answers: 1) Someone might want to reuse part of some AGPL software in a completly different work. For example, a AGPL-licensed blog system might include a code that implement an authentification scheme that you want to reuse in your POP3 server. If a license actively prevent you from doing that, then it is non-free. 2) People tend to have lots of misconception about software licenses and especially about the AGPL, and on the face of it, the AGPL might look as a good license to use: it is GPL3 compatible, new and shiny, supposed to close a GPL loop-hole, etc. and nowhere it is said it is only approriate for software doing such and such, so it is only a matter of time before Debian is confronted with this issue. Cheers, -- Bill. <ballo...@debian.org> Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
