[License-discuss] Total Reciprocity Public License (TRPL v1.0)

[Josh Berkus]

On 12/3/25 10:12 AM, Gil Yehuda wrote:
> I believe AGPL failed to meet its original intent. I understand the 
> motivation on the part of the FSF folks to close the “loophole" that 
> SaaS created given that software isn’t distributed in cardboard boxes 
> with disks inside them. But when you look at much of the AGPL-licensed 
> software (I have not done the research to know if this is the majority, 
> or just the majority of the kinds of software I come across in my work), 
> AGPL isn’t being used as much to promote the four software freedoms, 
> it’s often used to leverage corporate users into a commercial licensing 
> deal. Moreover, that mechanism was not as effective as the vendors 
> wished for, which is why many opted for different licenses (Commons 
> Clause, BSL, SSPL, etc.)

I take how things played out as an argument that AGPL *did* meet its 
goals of ensuring freedom for the public software that chose it (think 
CiviCRM).  That companies tried to treat it as a commercial license and 
found it inadequate is a point in the AGPL's favor.

However, I would say that any attempt to enforce software freedom beyond 
the limits of the AGPL is gonna require a lot of legal support.  There's 
still folks who argue that AGPL went beyond the limits of copyright law 
enforceability, and any "more free" license is going to be at least 
walking the border of what's possible in a license.

-- 
-- Josh Berkus
OSI Board Member