Web services and free software

[Alex Hudson]

On Sat, 2007-07-21 at 14:52 +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> How is the GPLv3 less friendly to hackers?  And how exactly is it more
> complicated than the GPLv2?

It's longer and invents new language - it seems pretty factual to me
that it's a more complex license, and the GPLv2 wasn't the most easily
understood license in the first place (hence so many people making
rudimentary mistakes like "You can't sell GPL'd software").

That's not saying it does that unnecessarily, but it does seem to be
indisputable.

> Without the GNU AGPL, we will have less means to protect our rights,
> so delaying it for a short or even forever would be a huge blow to
> free software.

Not everyone agrees that the right to see software source on someone
else's machine you're using is a free software right; I'm not
particularly sure I do.

> The original Affero GPL isn't compatible with the GPLv3 after all...

That's a shame if it's not, they did build in a clause to make it
compatible:

        "You may also choose to redistribute modified versions of this
        program under any version of the Free Software Foundation's GNU
        General Public License version 3 or higher, so long as that
        version of the GNU GPL includes terms and conditions
        substantially equivalent to those of this license."

Perhaps that upgrade route is dead now the Affero clause didn't make it
into the GNU GPLv3.

Cheers,

Alex.