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Comment by Pet_Ant | Hacker News Reader

I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well.

Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

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The problem I have with the SSPL is that Section 13. Offering the Program as a Service seems pretty vague. Here's the part I don't understand.

> Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version.

Does this include services you don't charge for? For example I might offer services for marketing reasons. At what point is the service no longer primarily derived from the Program? For example if I build an application that offers query capabilities but does not expose the Program API, does that count?

For contrast GPL V2 worked because it tied virality to linking, which is pretty easy to validate.

Yeah, I understand the SSPL has some issues that could use better clarification (exactly the extent the copyleft is intended to reach), but it is an aggressive copyleft license, and I'd argue, very in the spirit of open source. The parties using it could develop a more clear newer version to SSPL that addresses the concerns.

And the more companies adopt SSPL, the more pressure OSI will be under to accept a viable license for open source businesses.

i agree with your point on license proliferation.

the osi has failed, in my opinion, for not approving sspl or something similar.

i respect them a lot less for it than i used to.

sspl does not technically impose any restrictions on any class of users; it’s just an extreme copy left license.

instead, osi spent a time arguing about mongo business model, technical capabilities, and sales tactics.

mongo eventually pulled their application to osi because (i think) they were so turned off by the process and politics.

SSPL is hostile and vague from the get go, you're making it sound like MongoDB were the righteous ones here.

> Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality

That would be a horrible precedent. Sending an http request to a server should not trigger copyright violation. This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

The issue should be whether there is a linking and not the nature of the linking. I mean if "over HTTP" was a get-out-of-jail card then you just need a C-ABI => JSON standard, and then you can link any library you want and only the server-linker needs to be opensourced (and probably would be as BSD).

I believe this is why the GPL uses the term "derivative".

> This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

Making links to their site might violate the license by which they allow you to browse their site, but it doesn't break copyright. If the on their homepage had a pop-up "You must agree not to not share any links found on this site as a condition of using this site" that would be analogous.

> This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

No newspaper has claimed that ever to the best of my knowledge, and it would make absolutely no sense to. What's being criticized is so-called "rich linking", ie. previewing content such as Wikipedia articles from search engines or news articles from aggregators without taking viewers to the primary source/site. People having a radical anti-copyright agenda have conveniently named this "rich linking" to dilute the discussion, as have news aggregators to downplay the issue.

As an aside, the way the EU copyright reform is being formulated into national law in Germany has been criticized as outright contrary to the whole purpose of the reform, and coming straight from pro-Google lobbyists [1].

[1]: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/eu-urheberrechtsrefor... (in German)

it’s not copyright violation. it’s a license violation. they are completely different.

Copyright law is the basis for the legal enforcement of software licenses. License violations usually get pursued under copyright law

that’s fair, but my point is that the analogy of linking to a newspaper article content doesn’t really apply to this. it’s apples:oranges.

>Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality

Please don't compare a license to a virus. In any case, my understanding is that the AGPL does cover this and is why it exists. If it didn't cover this it would be useless.

>Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality

That's why I never understood the point of SSPL. Is this exactly what AGPLv3 is supposed to be for?

IANAL

I believe AGPL expands the definition of distribution not of linking. So if GCC was AGPL and I made a web page where you could upload source code and then download the binary, that would count as "distributing" GCC and thus I would have to make the changes I made available (because privately made change to GPL code do not have to be shared if the binaries aren't shared).

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