Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG (take 2)
David Claughton wrote:
> The Fungi wrote:
>> goes a great deal further than this, by *requiring* you to become a
>> distributor of software you use, even if you only do something so
>> simple as make a minor modification to an AGPL-covered work
>> providing a network service.
>
> You are only required to distribute the source if you choose to run it
> on a publicly accessible server. If it's on your own machine or a
> private server and no-one outside your organisation can access it, then
> you don't have to worry about it.
>
> If you are only distributing the software conventionally then you only
> have to provide or offer the source in exactly the same way as required
> by GPL.
>
OK, I've just re-read section 13 of the AGPL and I'm going to retract
that last sentence. It is indeed not quite that simple.
If you modify the program you also need to modify the offer to download
the source so it gets your modified code instead of the original. One
way to do this is to point it to your server, but it is not the only way.
For example, another way you might be able to comply with this
requirement is to always distribute the source along with the binaries
and arrange for the source to be downloaded from the same server the
binary is running from.
Now this could certainly involve more extensive modifications than you
might otherwise want to do, and you might well decide it's not worth the
effort. However I'm still not entirely convinced it makes the license
non-free.
Cheers,
David.
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