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Re: SSPL or server side public license, GNU better update the AGPL


From: Jacob Bachmeyer
Subject: Re: SSPL or server side public license, GNU better update the AGPL
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2021 21:52:32 -0500
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Florian Weimer wrote:
* Jean Louis:

MongoDB modifies AGPL to this:

If you make the functionality of the Program, or a modified version
available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service
Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge,
under the terms of this License. Making the functionality of the
Program or modified version available to third parties as a service
includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with
the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through
a computer network offering a service the value of which entirely or
primarily derives from the value of the Program

So they use here "must" and exclude only users interacting with it,
but include that license shall make software free for everybody.

The fundamental change is the bit about Service Source Code, which
covers much more than the Program itself:

| “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or
| the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that
| you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service,
| including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces,
| application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software,
| backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a
| user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code
| you make available.
The company could only do this because of the asymmetric licensing
arrangement with its contributors, so they did not have to worry about
compliance themselves for their own services.  For everyone else, the
situation is again rather murky.  For example, is disk firmware
“storage software” in the sense of the license?  We don't know.

Combine that with the requirement that "you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, *under* *the* *terms* *of* *this* *License*" and you have a situation where compliance is impossible if any component is GPL, since the GPL does not permit relicensing under the SSPL. In fact, as I understand, the FSF holds copyright on the texts of the various GPL-family licenses, and distributes them under "verbatim copying only" terms, the AGPL having been produced under special permission from the FSF... is the SSPL actually derived from the AGPL? If so, does the SSPL itself infringe the FSF's copyright on the GPL license text?


-- Jacob



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