Comment by _msw_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _msw_ | Hacker News Reader

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Disclosure: I work for AWS, but I am not paid by AWS to comment on HN on Free Software matters, on which I have my own personal opinions.

SSPLv1 is not a free software license. It is constructed to have unsatisfiable obligations that, in practice, restrict how the program can be used for completely legitimate, legal, and ethical purposes. Because the obligations cannot be satisfied, the license restricts the freedom of the user, thus software licensed with SSPLv1 is not Free Software.

See also the blog post from Bradley M. Kuhn, one of the main Free Software organizers who led the work to draft the Affero GPL and AGPLv3 licenses. [1]

Additional disclosure: I (personally) am a Software Freedom Conservancy Sustainer [2]. Consider donating if believe in fighting for digital rights, including rights to repair and improve software.

[1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality...

[2] https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/

Kuhn's post seems to be based solely on ideological arguments and seems to be mostly critisizing the company's actions rather than the license. I will personally disagree regarding the unsatisfiable obligations part. As for restrict how the program can be used for completely legitimate, legal, and ethical purpose I have also heard it about AGPL :p

The defects in SSPLv1 were raised by the community during the review process when it was submitted by MongoDB for comment. It would be redundant to re-enumerate them in a blog post like Bradley's, which already tend to be on the long side. ;-)

MongoDB acknowledged that there were improvements needed by drafting a v2 that attempted to address a number of them. But that draft was never finalized, or put into use on any software provided under SSPL license today.

From this I can only conclude that the goal is to use a maximally defective license (since there is an objectively better version proposed), with the expectation that no one who works diligently to work within the license requirements will touch it.

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