Is AGPLv3 DFSG-free?
Hi,
Yesterday I filed an ITP [1] to package a 3D game engine in Python,
called PySoy [2]. The package is almost finished, but I'm facing a
problem that I have to clarify before uploading it to Debian. The
latest release (beta2) is GPLv3, but for next one (beta3) they're
changing the license to AGPLv3 [3] (GNU Affero General Public License
v3). There is some logic after that decision, as they're adding a
Firefox plugin where game code runs entirely on a server (physics and
OpenGL are run inside the Firefox plugin, the Python game code -the
actual code that makes the game- is on the server). The AGPL is almost
similar to GPL, but with a very significative difference: it extends
copyleft rights to network users:
13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
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.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have
permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed
under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single
combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this
License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work,
but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version
3 of the GNU General Public License.
This might have more implications than I am able to foresee right now,
but it implies that you must give your modifications to whoever
interacts with your program through the network, for example in a
multiplayer game or a 3D instant messaging system. As it happens with
GPL, AGPL extends to the whole program, not just the statically linked
as LGPL does. I'm not exactly sure if it affects you sharing your
changes in libraries underneath, such as libode or openal-soft, for
example. This might be quite inconvenient (or not) for some people,
but what I wonder is if freedom of usage is limited in practice by
AGPL.
Do you think AGPLv3 is DFSG-free?
Thanks,
Miry
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/495172
[2] http://www.pysoy.org/
[3] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
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