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A comment on RethinkDB Relicensed under Apache 2.0. Parent comment

Re:RethinkDB Relicensed under Apache 2.0 by drdaeman on Monday February 06, 2017 @02:09PM (#13582806)
The real question is, why FSF isn't stepping up and resolving this issue once and for good?

They must've heard about the problem. Why won't they make a statement about intended reading of AGPLv3 and publish AGPLv4 that has improved wording that avoids any possible ambiguities?

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Re:RethinkDB Relicensed under Apache 2.0 by manarth on Monday February 06, 2017 @06:13PM (#13585240) 

  why FSF isn't stepping up and resolving this issue once and for good?
Because they don't have standing. They're not a judiciary, so they can't establish precedent - it take a court to do that.

Sure, they could change the wording, but unless there's a court verdict to establish precedent, there will always be ambiguity.

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Re:RethinkDB Relicensed under Apache 2.0 by drdaeman on Wednesday February 08, 2017 @06:40AM (#13597515)
They can say what they intended to mean, and while that won't become a part of the license, a court may consider that. Especially if this would get widespread as "not tested but meant as a canon interpretation" common knowledge.

To put it in other words, clarifying won't hurt, even if it could have no real effect.

But, yeah, the real way to fix is AGPLv4. And FSF surely can do this.

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