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SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

Posted Mar 14, 2013 11:13 UTC (Thu) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
In reply to: SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL by khim
Parent article: SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

Honestly this just sounds like FUD after thinking about it a minute.

Your overall argument seems to be that AGPL makes it harder to develop proprietary code for web developers, and that is obviously a problem! You seem completely oblivious that from the perspective of software freedom, the problem is almost exactly the opposite.

Also, plugins are in many/most cases under the terms of the GPL if the underlying program is GPL.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins

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SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

Posted Mar 14, 2013 12:34 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (guest, #60784) [Link]

My (admittedly quite literalist) reading of section 13 of the AGPL leads me to the belief that modifying an AGPL'd web server precludes allowing direct download of non-textual data via external links; any request for such data without a local referrer header would have to interpose some kind of annoying advertising page:

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.

(I'm assuming "downloading a binary file via a manually clicked deep link from outside" is interaction. I am, of course, not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)

SCALE: The life and times of the AGPL

Posted Mar 17, 2013 10:59 UTC (Sun) by filipjoelsson (guest, #2622) [Link]

So, i'm a Drupal developer working for a small newspaper publisher. I have coded a custom theme and a custom subscription module, as well as a module containing asorted hacks (changing the weight of specific article sections under certain conditions, adding publishing date and section title between the boldfaced preface and the text body, really layout stuff - but better done in a module). None of these is general enough to be usefull to others (except possibly as example code, but IMHO it's a bit too involved for that too).

I'm pretty confident that there is not opening for an SQL injection there, but the stuff is not general enough to be usefull to others. What's the point for me to share it? I file bug reports and patches to Drupal and the modules I use - but wouldn't AGPL include my local theming work?

I don't think this is FUD. Forcing web devs to distribute local modifications looks like busy work to me. Of course I'd be better off with general solutions - but my employer can't afford the investment. I am pretty confident my story is a common one.

IMHO a lot of the webb stuff, including CMS, are comparable to layout programs. But noone is yelling that Scribus should add a source code link to every produced print, right?

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