issues with the AGPL
Hello Debian legal,
I'd like to share two issue I found with the AGPL, for the record.
REFERENCES:
The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) is essentially the GNU General
Public License with the following additional clause reproduced below.
See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl.html for the full text
of the license.
""
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.
""
ISSUES:
0) Conflict with the The Free Software Definition:
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
The AGPL is in direct conflicts with the two paragraphs below:
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them
privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they
exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to
notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
However, rules about how to package a modified version are acceptable,
if they don't substantively limit your freedom to release modified
versions, or your freedom to make and use modified versions privately.
Rules that "if you make your version available in this way, you must
make it available in that way also" can be acceptable too, on the same
condition. (Note that such a rule still leaves you the choice of
whether to publish your version at all.) Rules that require release of
source code to the users for versions that you put into public use are
also acceptable. It is also acceptable for the license to require that,
if you have distributed a modified version and a previous developer
asks for a copy of it, you must send one, or that you identify yourself
on your modifications.
The AGPL seriously restrict your ability to make public version.
1) Clause 13 creates obligations for the persons who has modified the software,
even when they stopped using it and stopped to distribute it.
Suppose Alice modifies the software and distributes it in source form to
Bill. Alice stops to use the software. Bill starts using the software on a
server. Since it is Alice which modified the software, it is Alice which has
to satisfy clause 13, and thus to provide access to the Corresponding Source,
as long as Bill is using Alice version.
This is extremly onerous to Alice.
1 bis) it is Alice which is responsible for the runtime behaviour of the
modified software run by Bill, even though Bill can run it unmodified in
an environment which can cause it to perform differently than on Alice
computer, and not display prominently an offer for the Corresponding Source.
This is a risk to Alice.
2) The wording "your modified version must prominently offer " is
very strange: a modified version is not a legal entity that can offer
anything, let alone make good on an offer. So either the AGPL require the
modified version to be raised to AI level, or that the offer does not need
to be fulfilled.
3) The AGPL does not specify if the "computer network" and the "network
server" must be part of the same network. If yes, you might be forced to
provide the Corresponding Source on all non-internet connected networks someone
use your software on. If not, you can provide it from a network server where
noone has access to.
4) I find pretty alarming that the one situation where providing the
Corresponding Source is easy (where the program is a perl CGI script and you
just need to configure apache to allow users to download it from the /cgi-bin
directory and having it displays a link) is not suitable for the AGPL because
the program cannot force the webserver to allow such download.
5) Is recompiling a software modifying it for the AGPL ?
(Full disclosure: there is a GR proposal pending on this topic, with a
different rationale)
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org> "Please CC me"
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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