Re: Final text of AGPL v3
On 20/11/2007, Francesco Poli <frx@firenze.linux.it> wrote:
> What if the application on top of the stack is just a thin broker layer
> and any useful functionality is hidden in a backend that never
> *directly* interacts with public users "remotely through a computer
> network"?
Apologies for "triple-posting" on this thread, but another thought
occurs to me concerning this issue of "interaction", and how we
determine whether a program can be said to "support interaction
remotely through a computer network". Namely, for a program to be said
to "support interaction" in the manner envisaged by the AGPL, it must
at minimum be capable of providing access to the source for remote
users.
So to use an example that I'm most familiar with, if you have a
Wordpress installation running on top of a LAMP stack then neither
Linux, Apache, MySQL nor PHP is itself capable of providing access to
its source for remote users. Each would need the application sitting
on top - Wordpress - to provide that functionality. So I'd say that's
an indication that they are not "supporting interaction with remote
users" in the manner envisaged by the AGPL.
Wordpress itself, however, *is* capable of providing such access, so
if Wordpress were licensed under AGPL then modifications to the
Wordpress code would need to be made available under clause 13.
Of course, that still leaves the potential problem of circumventing
the AGPL by putting a non-free wrapper around the AGPLed application,
but it's difficult to see how that could be avoided. A determined
Evildoer can always find ways to comply with the letter of free
software licences while avoiding the spirit.
Finally, I'm conscious this is all a bit theoretical at the moment.
Are there any definite proposals to include AGPLed software (e.g.
Affero itself) in Debian, and if so how have these proposals been
received by the DDs?
John
(TINLA)
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