Hacker News Reader

The problem with SaaS is that the GPL offers me no rights in that instance because they aren't distributing and the GPL only comes into effect when a copy is distributed. Whether or not you believe in free software, you can see how the effectiveness of the GPL to fend off close-sourcing is diminished by SaaS. Anyone can take GPL-licensed software, modify it and offer it as SaaS without opening up that changed code.

View on HN

If this gets to be a problem I imagine people will just go with the affero gpl. GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are mutually compatible.

I remember reading some Eben Moglen & i think he mentioned that they didn't hardcode this into GPLv3 because the rights of someone using an ATM are (should be?) different from those of someone owning the machine with the code.

Oh, the ATM is a good example. For a user-oriented website though, I think the Affero licenses are a good idea if you care about Free Software. I personally don't see a whole lot of difference between logging into a mainframe system using a terminal, and logging into "the cloud" using my web browser.

Congratulations, you've just understood Google's business model.

Affero GPL to the rescue: http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com