Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

tomjen3·

I doubt that, because it would not be free software, and properly not open source.

But the AGPL does make it a requirement that the user can get the source even if the system runs over a network.

View on HN

[Sorry, I deleted without refreshing to check for replies. Here's the original:]

Aside: I'm curious if there are any OSI approved open source licenses that exclude server use.

I ask, because the current move towards services defeats the purpose of the GPL (of allowing access to the code users depend on.)

That's one of the bigger paradoxes of the arrival of the internet. It more or less empowered open source, and then by having the browser as a client made it possible for companies to use open source internally and to build services exposed to end users on top of that open source that will never be released as open source.

The 'affero GPL' attempts to cure this:

http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html

(and the current version: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html )

But so far it has not seen widespread acceptance.

I'd recommend pretty strongly against the AGPL. I know it sounds good when you want to "screw $megacorp," but it actually has all sorts of legal wrinkles in it that make ensuring compliance almost impossible in some cases. The end result is that people paranoid about getting sued about license problems will just not use your code most of the time, and that feels like damage done to the community, not help.

Sounds like something people used to say about the GPL itself before it became boringly normal for megacorps to use it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com