[copyleft-next] Platonic ideals, restrictiveness and weaker copyleft

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Thu Aug 2 02:32:26 UTC 2012


On 08/01/2012 06:06 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> Richard Fontana wrote at 08:19 (EDT):
>> I don't recall the FSF ever saying that GPLv3 is "stronger" than
>> GPLv2, or that AGPLv3 is "stronger" than GPLv3.
> 
> I'd readily agree that my calling AGPLv3 a "stronger" copyleft than
> GPLv3 is somewhat about marketing AGPLv3.  I don't know if you believe
> I'm the only promulgator of that usage, but I agree I've promulgated it.

I either wasn't aware of it or had forgotten it.

> OTOH, it's certainly true that I believe the freedom of users of
> network-hosted software to copy, share, modify, redistribute, and use
> modified versions of the software their using *is* an important right
> they should have.  Thus, when I say "stronger copyleft", I simply means
> "more of the user population are guaranteed rights to copy, share,
> modify, redistribute and use modified versions of the software".

Okay. That is not what I mean by "strong" copyleft. I just mean it in
the "GPL as opposed to LGPL" sense. I'll make some modification to the
'ABOUT' file to clarify that.

It occurs to me that one of the ways ws-supp should improve upon
AGPLv3 is to provide more clarity on the scope of the source code
requirement. Depending on how that's done and how a particular person
interprets AGPLv3 today, that might be seen by that person as a
weakening effect. Right now, however, I don't think of my goal for
ws-supp as being to make it Michael Meeks' proposed ALGPL.

  - Richard





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