Fully Open Public Licence
github.com
github.com
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#fs-definition https://opensource.org/osd https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines https://wiki.debian.org/DissidentTest https://wiki.debian.org/DesertIslandTest https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
## What about the Debian "Political Dissident" test?
See the above. Pretty much the same thing. Again, if I can find some
wording to exempt individuals from the distribution requirement who would
otherwise be put at clear risk to their human rights by state or corporate
actors, then I'll add such wording.Are those definitions unassailable truisms that are not up for debate? Are the authors arguments in favor of his own license not worth rebutting directly on the merits?
> No I do not, and I have no idea.
> I would greatly prefer to have a legal professional draft these changes. In lieu of that, I have tried to approach this by combining existing professionally drafted texts, and minimised adding my own wording.
It’s an interesting idea for a license but no one should use this until it’s been reviewed by a competent lawyer.
Either you need someone who can take the time to learn all of the ins and outs and knows how to apply it, including the international ones, or you can find someone who knows that stuff by heart.
You mean RH only releasing source to paying customers who have agreed though other arrangements not to share it? That's a GPL violation waiting for a court case.
That being said, I hope people choose to use this new license.
1. The name.
2. Section 13's title is changed from "Use with the GNU Affero General Public License" to "Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License" and this is inserted before its first paragraph:
> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
3. Some more is added about how the two licenses work with each other.
The whole point of AGPL is to deal with users interactive with the program (but only remotely over computer networks...if they are interacting remotely with it but not via a computer network or if they are interacting locally then AGPL is effectively GPL).
You download a FOPL version of something like cron. You make some changes to this code and run it on your internal servers to schedule some business process.
Even though this software, not even the server, even catches a whiff of the internet, since the software has been “Deployed” for a commercial use case, the company is obliged to make the changes to the code publicly available.
Simply, this license expands the distribution concept to commercial use, whether anyone else ever encounters it or not.
"You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Software with other code
not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work
as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements
of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Software."
Which is a red flag. The AGPL was basically designed to be the strongest possible copyleft FOSS license. When people try to make even stronger ones, they usually end up making something that's neither free nor open source (e.g., the SSPL), and that's exactly what ended up happening here.
"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
The FSF's stewardship of copyleft has led us to the current status quo, where the GPLv2 is still incredibly common compared to v3, the AGPL is considered niche, and it seems most developers these days prefer permissive licenses anyway.
These kinds of new licenses are exactly the breath of fresh air we need. If the existing free software/open source dogma says they're bad, maybe it's the dogma that's wrong.