> the corporations who disallow agpl only do so because they want to comply in a way that is against the spirit of open source

believe it or not this is not actually true! the corporations who disallow agpl do so because their lawyers (correctly) tell them that agpl-licensed software has not been adequately tested in relevant courts of law, and that by including agpl-licensed software they are opening themselves up to unknown/unbounded legal liability/risk!

"the spirit of open source" has nothing to do with anything!

the more you know

▲

nothrabannosir 6 days ago | parent [-]

I’ve heard this one before and if the agpl were two years old I’d buy it. But they had ample opportunity to craft a better license by now, so at this point it’s hard to believe that’s not just a convenient excuse.

Don’t like the agpl wording, but agree with the spirit? Ok, you have the lawyers, write a better agpl that abides by the same spirit and which you trust.

But: nothing. And waiting won’t change that. It may be also true, but it’s just excuse at this point. They’re not chomping at the bit to introduce networked virality of software freedom into their platforms.

▲

kiitos 5 days ago | parent [-]

you're arguing with the messenger. whether or not you buy anything is completely immaterial, what matters is the actual position of legal depts in corporations. said another way this is not a normative discussion (folks SHOULD be doing X) it is a descriptive discussion (folks ARE doing X)

you're also completely missing the point. it's not on anyone to "fix" the agpl, the point is about whether the agpl as it exists is usable in practice. answer, no, not really. "software freedom" doesn't even enter the discussion.

▲

nothrabannosir 5 days ago | parent [-]

Your position would be eminently reasonable if this comment thread were kicked off by a blog post called "Evil Corpos are Bad Guys, They Should Accept AGPL! A Treatise Out Of Nowhere."

Corporations are free to do as they choose. They can choose not to use AGPL software. That's ok, they don't owe anyone anything (arguable but let's go with it), and I'd have no leg to stand on.

But that's not what happened here. Look at the quote that kicked off this thread:

> Shame on the people who recommend the AGPL to effectively be an OSI-approved source-available license.

> This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.

Note "Shame" and "the spirit of open source." Someone kicked off this thread painting authors of AGPL software as going against the spirit of open source for promoting a license which they know big corporations shun.

At that point it's a very different context. Remember how corporations don't owe anyone anything? Neither do free software devs. That entire comment is completely wrong, and the entire thread which followed only exists in its context. Not outside. And inside that context, it is absolutely valid to talk about the spirit of open source, to talk about what "should", etc, because that's the context introduced by the comment itself.

"Software freedom" doesn't just "enter" the discussion--it is the discussion.

	▲	kiitos 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		i replied to the following statement > the corporations who disallow agpl only do so because they want to comply in a way that is against the spirit of open source in isolation "the spirit of open source" is not anything that can even be evaluated by any corporate legal team, much less is it anything that can be complied-with (or not-complied-with) in any kind of way but i guess we talkin' past each other