Re:RethinkDB Relicensed under Apache 2.0
by hedora on Monday February 06, 2017 @11:04AM
(#13580678)
Agreed, though the FSF explicitly chose gplv3 over an agpl style license.
My two cents:
The irony is that the GPL was meant to protect users' freedom, and cloud services are a giant unforeseen loophole in the GPL that is even more abusive of user freedoms than old school proprietary software (NSA, ad trackers, forced upgrades, censorship, mass deletions, etc).
There is more money in closed source centralized services, and the FSF was afraid to stand up for the principles it was founded on.
I hope the industry eventually rebuilds itself on the AGPL (and BSL + AGPL for active, commercially developed stuff), but the fight will be at least as hard as mainstreaming the gpl was.
My two cents:
The irony is that the GPL was meant to protect users' freedom, and cloud services are a giant unforeseen loophole in the GPL that is even more abusive of user freedoms than old school proprietary software (NSA, ad trackers, forced upgrades, censorship, mass deletions, etc).
There is more money in closed source centralized services, and the FSF was afraid to stand up for the principles it was founded on.
I hope the industry eventually rebuilds itself on the AGPL (and BSL + AGPL for active, commercially developed stuff), but the fight will be at least as hard as mainstreaming the gpl was.