Re: Do Debian's users care about the AGPL?
Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> Sometimes I get the feeling that Debian's users and Debian's
> developers live in separate worlds.
>
> There's currently a long thread in d-legal over the AGPL. One DD has
> expressed reservations towards the AGPL to the point where she has
> decided not to package a certain program covered by the AGPL.
Here's the web archive of the thread for anyone interested:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/08/msg00045.html
> Do Debian's users care about this sort of legal geekery or is
> everything fine as long as AGPLed programs go into non-free?
I think caring about legal geekery is one reason many Debian users are Debian
users. As a user (potential developer) I appreciate the AGPL's extra
restrictions guaranteeing that I will benefit from improvements made to the
program even if I only use it remotely. Of course, that comes at a cost for the
maintainers of a service based on an AGPL'd program, but hopefully that was
something they examined and accounted for in setting up the service.
I see nothing in the AGPL which is in any way against the DFSG, so I'd like to
see AGPL licensed programs in main. It's certainly trying its best to keep the
spirit of Free software alive even for binaries which are executed by end-users
but not distributed. I like the idea.
- Chris Burkhardt
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