Web services and free software

Alfred M. Szmidt ams at gnu.org
Sat Jul 21 12:52:28 UTC 2007


   I feel that placing restrictions on the output of software, as seen
   in Affero GPL, is an evolutionary dead-end and a way for FSF to
   defeat itself.  The complications of GPLv3 are already a
   disturbance (it may be more lawyer-friendly, but it's not nice to
   even copyright-experienced hackers, let alone hackers who don't
   understand copyright yet) and that may be a threat to free
   software.

How is the GPLv3 less friendly to hackers?  And how exactly is it more
complicated than the GPLv2?

   I hope that Affero GPL gets delayed, at least long enough to allow
   developers to digest GPLv3 and to let FSF webmasters unbreak stet,
   or maybe forever.

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



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