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Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

He has a valid point about restructuring the three freedoms that he did keep to make sense. However that 'zeroth freedom', which both the FSF and he initially forgot, is important as well.

"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose"

This is about licences that restricted possible uses of software. Just as you are free to drive your vehicle anywhere * , and transport anything * while using it, so to should you be free to use software the same way.

( * the point is no artificial additional restrictions, not literally wildcard)

Multiple edits: I will never get used to the crazy custom syntax HN posts have. It isn't pure plain text (maybe with hyperlinks), a form of psudeocode tagging, or markdown like.

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"You are free to drive your vehicle anywhere for any purpose" seems to be going away:

https://electrek.co/2016/10/19/teslas-new-self-driving-car-c...

It is already gone for many cars.

Some higher end cars will detect your location on various racing tracks and void your warranty.

Cars equipped with OnStar cam be shutdown and located remotely.

Famously, the Nissan skyline also voids your warranty if you use the launch control feature more than a handful of times.

Seems pretty innocent so far, but this type of thing should be banned before it gets worse. Right now there's zero manufacturer incentive not to hide these kinds of things in the firmware.

The car can be used anywhere, but the warranty (rightfully) is a different issue.

Note also that the car can't "void your warranty" in any meaningful way, all it can do is record if certain actions occured; and that's orthogonal to the warranty issue. Driving on a racing track makes the warranty just as void (or not) if the car didn't record anything, it's a legal matter depending on the warranty conditions and your local law, all the car provides is some more information that can help establish what the facts are.

The OnStar is an obvious example.

But how does voiding the warranty restrict your ability to drive where you want?

It's the vendor simply saying "you're doing something we did not intend you to do with the product, so it's on you if you fuck up". How does that infringe on your freedom to drive where you want?

Ironically no. You still are free to drive your Tesla anywhere for any purpose. The limitation is only for the future self-driving feature.

I'm not sure that the FSF considers freedom 0 to be essential anymore. They describe it as follows:

> The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.

AGPL was accepted by the FSF as a free software license, yet it is quite problematic when it comes to freedom 0.

Suppose I find a program that displays an interactive chess board in a window, and lets you play over chess games that you enter by pasting in the moves.

I modify the program so that it includes a simple HTTP interface. Someone on the network can connect to that interface, and if the person sitting at the terminal is willing, the person on the network can play a game of chess with the person sitting at the terminal. If I'm already a playing a game, people who connect over the HTTP interface will be placed in a queue to wait for me to be available.

If this program was under AGPL, I have to give my modified version to those who play chess with me over the network.

To make that requirement be in accord with freedom 0, it is necessary to claim that I am not a "user" of the program and/or that I did not "run" the program.

It's kind of hard to say I'm not a "user", since I am sitting at the damn terminal using the program. Same for "run". I typed the command that started the program running.

(Note: I've seen people argue that the person coming in over the net is a "user" and that they "run" the program. Even if so, that is not relevant here, because AGPL is not trying to impose any requirements on them. It is trying to impose a requirement on me, and so is only whether or not I am a "user" and what I did was to "run" the program that is relevant as far as determine whether or not imposing a requirement on me violates my freedom 0).

But you are "conveying" the software to the users, that's the whole point. AGPL just extends the meaning of the word conveying to also include users connecting over the network.

As for it infringing on freedom 0, I don't understand how your logic wouldn't also apply for the GPL. I disagree that you cannot "use the software for any purpose" with the AGPL. You haven't given an example of you being restricted by it. If a user gave a copy of their program to another user they would have the exact same requirement (under the plain GPL). If you wanted to run a private copy of your modified program you just have to make it forbidden to connect to that interface.

Also, there's no reason you cannot just provide a link to a git repo for your modified project. Which means that you don't even have to modify your program to distribute its source code to users.

> But you are "conveying" the software to the users

No, you are not conveying the software to people who merely interact with it over the network. From the text of AGPL itself:

AGPL> To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

> As for it infringing on freedom 0, I don't understand how your logic wouldn't also apply for the GPL. I disagree that you cannot "use the software for any purpose" with the AGPL.

Being able to "use the software for any purpose" is not sufficient to satisfy freedom 0. As the FSF explains:

FSF> The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity.

Note that you have to be able to use it for any purpose without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. If my purpose with the program from my example is to play chess from my computer with remote people, I am not able to do that under AGPL unless I communicate my modifications to them.

> No, you are not conveying the software to people who merely interact with it over the network. From the text of AGPL itself:

Yeah, you're right it's not called "conveying" in the AGPL. But the whole point of section 13 is that it's _like_ conveying. I'm not a lawyer and I doubt you are, so the distinction is without a difference IMO.

> Being able to "use the software for any purpose" is not sufficient to satisfy freedom 0. As the FSF explains:

> Note that you have to be able to use it for any purpose without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. If my purpose with the program from my example is to play chess from my computer with remote people, I am not able to do that under AGPL unless I communicate my modifications to them.

I don't agree with that reading of what the FSF says. "developers or any specific entity" is referring to telemetry. If you have to give a copy of the code to all users of software you've exposed on the network, you are not sending it to "developers or any specific entity" -- it's just the users that you're communicating with over the network.

The whole point is that you can choose to not share your code with anyone -- meaning that you can choose to not offer a network service to anyone.

> "developers or any specific entity" is referring to telemetry.

I generally agree with your reading, but I think this part more likely refers to things like registration.

There are many oldish licenses that allow modifying code but require sending all modifications to the original developer of the software. I believe that's what's being referred to. Some of them are listed in the GNU license list [1]: AT&T Public License, Reciprocal Public License, Open Public License, eCos, Plan 9, APSL v1, and (not old, and hence obnoxious) the Oculus Rift SDK license.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

Maybe I read it differently. When I read "the developer or any other specific entity", I don't think that the network users count as "specific entities"; they are other users of the software, and you have control over exactly who those people are. Neither the original developer of the software, nor any specific (i.e. predetermined, exact) entity must be communicated your modifications, only those you choose to put yourself in that situation with.

Actually, Richard Stallman is quite clear about it:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...

If it helps, use the phrase "making available" instead of redistributing. For example, a movie theater don't simply use a movie, or else anyone who bought a copy could start up their own theater. If you are providing a way for others to experience the artistic work of the author, you are going to run into permission problem if all you got is the permission to run it.

There is a bunch of similar situation where copyright law and licenses interacts when more than one user are using a single copy. Radio for example is legal to run in Sweden, but not played aloud in public areas (like a restaurant). A musician can run other artists music sheets around a handful of people, but need permission in case they do so on a concert. And movies as mentioned earlier is legal to run in a household without getting more than one license, but not when it could be considered a crowd.

The only problem with "making available", is that the term is horrible from a philosophical perspective. Copyright for cases where no copy has been created is much closer a market regulation than the classical theories of author rights.

> I modify the program so that it includes a simple HTTP interface.

Now your program supports two different shells[1]. Your original window-style (probably graphical) user interface is a popular type of shell. The new shell uses HTTP for transport, probably in a style derived from the block oriented terminals like the IBM 3270[2].

While these are very different types of shells which support very different sets of features, the are both common ways to interact with computers. The person using the HTTP interfaces is using a shell on your computer to run programs, and thus is a user of the chess program. The limitation of only being able to run one program only makes the HTTP interface a very limited shells, which isn't relevant to the {,A}GPL.

> I've seen people argue that the person coming in over the net is a "user"

Yes, because the person coming in over the net is a user if the program. The person that is at the local terminal is also a user of the program. Being a user doesn't require physical locality or a particular type of interface.

> because AGPL is not trying to impose any requirements on them

Correct. The GPL licenses are copyright licenses, not some sort of EULA. They only impact the person who is distributing the software, or in the particular case of the AGPL, the person providing the network service. The latter is important because of the trend bypass the user's* freedoms (even the remote user). The AGPL closes the loophole of using a Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS[3]) to avoid the usual distribution of the software.

> It is trying to impose a requirement on me

Only if you allow other people to use the software. (or if you distribute it and need a license for copyright reasons)

> imposing a requirement on me violates my freedom

No requirement is imposed on you for using the software. The AGPL only requires that you provide the other people that uses the software through your new interface the same freedom.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28computing%29

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270

[3] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

> Correct. The GPL licenses are copyright licenses, not some sort of EULA. They only impact the person who is distributing the software, or in the particular case of the AGPL, the person providing the network service.

Distribution is one of the exclusive rights copyright law gives to the copyright owner. Hence the need for a license from the copyright owner to allow others to distribute.

What copyright rights do you think are implicated in interacting with a program over a network, particular in a case like my hypothetical chess program where the interaction is just exchanging small amounts of data? The only one I see that can maybe apply is the public performance right. How that applies to computer programs is not clear under current caselaw. My recollection is that it is generally believed it would apply to things like video games, where someone observing the "performance" would be seeing copyrighted elements of the video game. For things like databases, communications programs, and the like, trying to apply the public performance right is much more questionable.

Calling GPL a copyright license makes sense, because the acts that trigger obligations under GPL are acts that require permission from the copyright owner. AGPL triggers on those, and on providing network access, which unless the public performance right can be made to apply does not generally require copyright owner permission. That puts AGPL into EULA-like territory.

> The latter is important because of the trend bypass the user's* freedoms (even the remote user). The AGPL closes the loophole of using a Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS[3]) to avoid the usual distribution of the software.

That's Stallman's updated position. His earlier view was that software (even proprietary software) on a server does not limit the freedom of those who use the program remotely:

RMS> ...a proprietary program on a web server that somebody else is running limits his freedom perhaps, but it doesn’t limit your freedom or my freedom. We don’t have that program on our computers at all, and in fact the issue of free software versus proprietary [only] arises for software that we’re going to have on our computers and run on our computers. We’re gonna have copies and the question is, what are we allowed to do with those copies? Are we just allowed to run them or are we allowed to do the other useful things that you can do with a program? If the program is running on somebody else’s computer, the issue doesn’t arise. Am I allowed to copy the program that Amazon has on it’s computer? Well, I can’t, I don’t have that program at all, so it doesn’t put me in a morally compromised position.

(http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/08/open-source-licenses-are-ob...)

> The only one I see that can maybe apply is the public performance right. How that applies to computer programs is not clear under current caselaw.

Anyone is free to bet money on it. Streaming cases has been done in several countries, and the outcome was expected. The argument for lets-play often discuss classical assets like images and sound, but the purpose of the artistic work in a game is the full experience. A networked chess program that anyone can use for free would be more akin to a pirate version of Steam than a lets-play. The installation directory just happen to be remotely rather than locally.

> interaction is just exchanging small amounts of data

I can encode a video to be just small amounts of data in comparison to the original. I have yet to see any infringement case where the amount of data is relevant, except in the pirate bay case where that argument failed.

When editing before posting, I omitted some qualifications I had intended to include. By "small amounts of data", I meant small amounts of data that contain no copyrighted elements whose copyrights are owned by the owner of the program's copyright.

When it comes to software, "no copyrighted elements" is not clearly defined.

For example, the output of a word processor is clearly not copyrighted by the word processor author. Most people agree to this.

However, if I created a remote login system where millions of users could access one and the same windows word installation, I would likely get sued by Microsoft. Even if the small amounts of data that is streamed through remote control has no copyrighted elements that is owned by Microsoft, the fact is that I am evading the copyright of Word and undermining the market value for the program (or at least thats what I suspect the lawyers should say).

This is generally where clear lines end, and the fuzzy world of legal opinions of juries/judges starts. The output of a word processor program not the same as the output of remote controlling said program. Evading the copyright through remote control doesn't sound as something a judge would look favorable on, and in the end it is the infringer that need to convince the judge and jury that their activity is within the license/law, or that the usage is within reasonable expectations.

One trick to get around the use of asterisk for italicizing test for footnotes, use a character like this one: † I keep a copy at the top of a file that I always have loaded in my Emacs.

I've created the program symbol2unicode¹ for that. You can enter ascii representations of a symbol, say ->, and you get the unicode symbol (→). It has a CLI interface and a web interface. I keep it always around in a terminal tab and made some Vim binding as well.

¹https://github.com/htdebeer/symbol2unicode

Cool!

I don't play the Node.js game, but I'll see about polishing my 2 decades rusty Javascript web page experiences and see if I can't make this into a simple web page which I can keep a tab always loaded with, I pretty much only use Unicode characters for web comments and the like. Although if this makes it a lot easier ... and I suppose I should see if Emacs has such a feature.

Anyway, thanks!

I've also a web interface at https://heerdebeer.org/Software/symbol2unicode/converter.htm...

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