Free Software Foundation Announces Support of the Affero General Public License, the First Copyleft License for Web Services
Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Tuesday, March 19th, 2002 - The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announces support for and invites public comment on the first public license designed to protect software distributed as web services: the Affero General Public License (AGPL). The AGPL combines the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) V2 with one additional provision to address software used by the public over a network. The new provision enables the author to ensure that users will have the right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute that software, by providing a mechanism for downloading the source and restricting the removal of the mechanism. Full story at: http://www.fsf.org/press/2002-03-19-Affero.html At first glance this doesn't seem like a good idea to me. The GPL already enforces the free redistribution of GPL and modified GPL software, so why do you need to give users an explicit button to download it? The problems this would cause with infrastructure, screen real estate cluttering and unnessary traffic on the 'net are too expensive compared to the benefit the additional clause gives the users and developers. Regards, -- Raju -- Raju Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ It is the mind that moves ================================================ To subscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subscribe in subject header To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe in subject header Archives are available at http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd%40wpaa.org =================================================
