Wed, 21/11/2007 - 09:23 — peterv

On 19 Nov 2007, FSF released version 3 of the Affero General Public License. This could be exactly what I was waiting for as a license for parts of the new site I am planning. I am considering to open source at least the "query/search" side of the site to allow collaboration and reuse of the code on that side. In parallel, I may consider the "dual license" approach that has worked fairly well for companies like MySQL AB and Trolltech AB. But, a "dual license" approach for a web service won't work very well with GPL v2 or GPL v3, because the "Web services loophole" clearly leaves open the opportunity to reuse and modify GPL v2 and GPL v3 code on a web service, without "giving back" the modifications/additions to that code to the users and other programmers of the service (which commercially also means that companies that want to run a commercial web server, without publishing the code that is partially based on code running on my site, have little incentive to buy a commercial license). So, this is the quid-quo-pro, extended by section 13 of the Affero license to the web services world.

The current stance of Dries on this matter is clear: "So long live the web services loophole!". I beg to differ ...

Open for discussion, just my current thoughts.