[License-review] AGPL timeline & why cautious processes with real-world testing are better (was Re: For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4))

[VanL]

I am not sure that holding up the drafting process of AGPL v1 is helpful
here.


Apologies if I get any of the dates wrong, but if I recall correctly,
during the time when the AGPL was drafted, Bradley was working for the FSF
( or had just recently finished working with them). Bradley also maintained
a close official relationship with the FSF even after he left - he just
resigned as a director last year.

This means that during the time when the AGPL was drafted, Bradley had
extraordinary access to the decisionmakers at the FSF, and used that access
to advance the AGPL.

The drafting if the AGPL was also essentially a private process. Bradley
may have consulted with various people, but I remember when the AGPL came
out, and I don't remember it being a public process - certainly not to the
same extent that the CAL has been refined in public.

So regardless of whether the AGPL was "accepted" or "endorsed" by the FSF,
it benefitted from Bradley's official relationship with the FSF. It seems
unlikely that anyone not-Bradley could have drafted a license and got it on
the FSF's list of recognized Free Software licenses.

This is significant because the inclusion of the AGPL on the FSF's list of
recognized Free Software licenses was essential to its growth and use as a
license.

In short, it not reasonable to hold it up the AGPL process as a model for
others. The "go slow" model that Bradley is proposing was based upon the
unique circumstances of Bradley's employment with the FSF and his ability
to bypass the sort of process that the CAL is going through and get his
license on the list of FSF-recognized licenses.

__________________________
Van Lindberg
van.lindberg at gmail.com
m: 214.364.7985

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020, 11:14 PM Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at ebb.org> wrote:

> McCoy Smith wrote today:
> >    As far as I can tell, AGPLv1 never got on the OSI list ... AGPLv3 was
> >    submitted in January 2008 AGPLv3 was finalized in November 2007 (so it
> >    was submitted to OSI two months after its drafting was completed).  It
> >    was approved in March 2008 ... So AGPLv3 went from finalization to OSI
> >    approval in a mere 4 months.
>
> Starting the clock on Affero GPL at the third-party 2008-03 list submission
> doesn't reflect OSI's diligence in past decisions.  OSI leadership was
> aware
> of AGPLv1. (I know, because I talked extensively with OSI directors during
> the
> years AGPLv1 was the only AGPL.)  No one even considered submitting it
> officially because -- as a careful and thoughtful license drafting
> authority
> -- FSF experimented in real world scenarios with a (possibly silly) new
> copyleft idea first for years before declaring it official.  Heck, I admit
> I
> was on the wrong side of history on this one: I advocated for the FSF to
> release a GPLv2.2 in 2003 with the Affero clause in it.  The FSF didn't
> like
> the idea, precisely because the clause was too novel, and needed time to
> see
> if developers felt the clause brought them and their users' software
> freedom.
>
> So instead, AGPLv1 was deployed as a GPLv2 fork, used by projects, but not
> officially endorsed by the FSF nor the OSI.  This was a good thing.
> Looking
> back now, I see that I was the fool who was rushing in by asking for the
> Affero clause to become standard merely two years after its invention and
> first promulgation.
>
> This caution is similar to what Fontana (et al) have done with
> copyleft-next.
> copyleft-next has many novel copyleft ideas worth trying.  But, no one has
> submitted it to OSI yet, even though it's years old now and is in use by
> projects.  I wrote more about this last year in:
> <
> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-November/003828.html
> >
>
> And, during all that AGPL real-world experimentation time, no one, as Luis
> claimed, "screamed" at AGPLv1'd projects that I'm aware of.
>
> Luis wrote today:
> >> OSI and many allies will scream bloody murder (arguably with reason!)
>
> BTW, Luis, I find that phrase "scream bloody murder" offensive.  We
> shouldn't
> be comparing a license choice, even one we detest, to murder.  Such phrases
> can also be triggering for those who have experienced murder of a friend or
> family member.
> --
> Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him
>
> Pls. support the charity where I work, Software Freedom Conservancy:
> https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
>
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