[License-discuss] [License-review] For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4)

[Richard Fontana]

(Moved to license-discuss)

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 7:53 AM Simon Phipps <simon at webmink.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 3:38 AM Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> It matters whether proprietary relicensing is the primary use case for
>> at least a couple of reasons. First, there is the long general history
>> of this technique being used, in effect, as a disguised attempt to
>> inhibit software freedom, particularly for commercial users.
>
>
> I'm interested in wider consideration of the community norms for this use case. Do you by any chance have a pointer to the archives of the discussion of this use case as it related to the design and approval of AGPL (not just at OSI obnviously as it was brought here fully formed)? I realise the license was created independently of the companies abusing it, but the consideration of creation of license terms ripe for abuse would obviously still apply and I would like to study the prior discussion as I was only involved in the GPLv3 process and not the AGPL process.

Simon, I think you're asking about the drafting of AGPLv3. I don't
know of any relevant discussion archives. The now somewhat legendary
GPLv3 Discussion Committees engaged in very little if any review of
AGPLv3, even though it was actually members of Committee D who were
the principal external drivers for creation of the license in the
first place.

There was hardly any discussion of dual licensing in the GPLv3 process
as to GPLv3. About the only issue I can remember being raised was some
concern, expressed by one vendor, that certain new language in what's
now GPLv3 section 5 was troublingly permissive-sounding. As for
AGPLv3, there was basically no corporate/vendor interest in it during
the drafting phase, for whatever reason, and I think the drafters just
didn't think about it being used in a proprietary relicensing context.
I suppose there's a bit of an irony here given the role played by a
commercial vendor (Affero, Inc.) in the larger history of AGPL, though
as far as I understand Affero, Inc. never engaged in proprietary
relicensing.

Also, the perception of proprietary relicensing as a kind of mode of
abuse or unethical open source licensing practice is something that I
believe grew over time, and in 2007 it was still largely simmering
beneath the surface.

Richard