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

[Bruce Perens]

> any "more free" license is going to be at least walking the border of
what's possible in a license.

But not necessarily a more formal contract.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2025 at 4:19 PM Josh Berkus <josh.berkus at opensource.org>
wrote:

> 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
>
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-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP
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