Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 1, 2020 15:50 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference by IanKelling
Parent article: Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Pithos is actually GPLv3, not AGPL: https://github.com/pithos/pithos/blob/master/license

> I've just demonstrated that on my computer, there are several useful agpl programs that i've been using for years.
Sure, there are exceptions. I think the _only_ non-trivial software I've seen so far under pure AGPL is nextCloud. Almost everything else is either simple or dual-licensed.

So AGPL is basically a dead license.

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 3, 2020 3:07 UTC (Sun) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (2 responses)

I just realized something interesting about GPLv3 adoption that I'd actually forgotten about for my talk. If I give this talk again (how about it, LinuxFoundation ? :-) I'd include this perspective that I'm copying here from my own comment on the slashdot (yes, some of us still read it :-) version of this article:

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Here is a great retrospective on GPLv3 from a good friend of mine, Richard Fontana at Red Hat:

https://opensource.com/article... [opensource.com]

One of the things he notes (that to be honest I'd forgotten about for my talk) is that Red Hat and others have lead the charge to adopt the "forgiveness" provisions of GPLv3 (which as I recall was one of the primary concerns of corporate lawyers taking part in the GPLv3 drafting process) into GPLv2.

To quote from the linked article:

> "This in turn was followed by a Red Hat-led series of corporate commitments to extend the GPLv3 cure provisions to GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x noncompliance, a
> campaign to get individual open source developers to extend the same commitment, and an announcement by Red Hat that henceforth GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x
> projects it leads will use the commitment language directly in project repositories."

From Richard's blog post:

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog... [redhat.com]

> "As of today, all new Red Hat-initiated open source projects that opt to use GPLv2 or LGPLv2.1 will be expected to supplement the license with the cure
> commitment language of GPLv3."

A cynic would read that as an attempt by Red Hat to neuter possible adoption of GPLv3 with it's "problematic" (for corporations) anti-DRM provisions. In the words of one of my favorite fictional characters - "You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment" :-).
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Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 3, 2020 3:15 UTC (Sun) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link]

Sorry, links in the previous comment were broken (note to self, don't cut-n-paste truncated web-page representations of links as text :-) :

Richard Fontana's retrospective:

https://opensource.com/article/18/6/gplv3-anniversary

Richard Fontana's blog post:

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/gpl-cooperation-commitment...

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 4, 2020 0:01 UTC (Mon) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link]

A fellow Samba Team member and Red Hat engineer has just pointed out to
me that it's unfair to call out Red Hat specifically for this, and in retrospect
I agree with him and would like to apologize to Red Hat.

Many others including my own employer Google also signed on to this statement as well.

Sorry Red Hat. Hats off to you for all your sterling Open Source work :-).

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 4, 2020 17:15 UTC (Mon) by federico3 (guest, #101963) [Link] (4 responses)

AGPL is widely used across the ActivityPub/Mastodon ecosystem and it's being adopted very quickly.

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 4, 2020 17:19 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

Sorry, but I don't consider Mastodon to be a serious app.

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 4, 2020 17:58 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

Way to move the goalposts there.

...Mastadon (and the rest of the activitypub ecosystem) may not be your cup of tea, but it is decidedly non-trivial.

(Or do you only consider something "successful" or "serious" when its userbase is hits nine digits?)

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 4, 2020 18:06 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

A successful project is something that has an impact, not necessarily with the raw number of users. I guess it needs to be at least noticeable in the area it serves. Example: Blender - it's now widely used in animation industry.

So far Mastodon has is basically a large hobbyist project for bored coders, if it disappears almost nobody would notice this.

But OK, whatever. Let's say that there are two large AGPL-only projects: Mastodon and nextCloud. I guess it's "Mission Accomplished" for AGPL?

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 4, 2020 18:20 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> So far Mastodon has is basically a large hobbyist project for bored coders, if it disappears almost nobody would notice this.

While what you say is probably true, I doubt their choice of software license will have anything to do with it.

> But OK, whatever. Let's say that there are two large AGPL-only projects: Mastodon and nextCloud. I guess it's "Mission Accomplished" for AGPL?

Many years ago, I deliberately chose to _not_ use AGPL for one of my projects, for many of the reasons mentioned in this thread. I share the opinion that the AGPL is only really useful as a poison pill.