I’ve long been sceptical of the Affero-style licence terms. It certainly DOES work in the sense that it (and GPL3 which makes use of it) is a forbidden license in many companies. It probably does not work in the sense of letting the software be broadly used and forcing change/wrapper source to be published.
Fundamentally, I’m opposed for copyright to be applied to usage limits, as opposed to distribution limits. It’s fine to prohibit distribution of derivative works without source. It’s annoying (probably legal, but I prefer to just not try) to prohibit USE of code that you legitimately acquired and then privately modified. I think it’s fundamentally non-free software if I’m disallowed from using a modification for my own purposes (even if those purposes are accessible by others).
I know of zero court cases or even successful threats of such, which hinge on this clause. Companies who are careful just avoid it, companies who aren’t ignore it (and either aren’t caught or the copyright owner realizes it’s not worth pursuing). Note that simple compilation or repackaging is a modification, so would trigger this, just as distributing a compiled or repackaged version does.
The fundamental tradeoff of getting your software/library to be popular and well used versus limiting the ways your customers can extend and use your software in less-publically-visible ways has changed in the last 30 years. I think RMSs original goals (no printers you can’t hack and recompile) have failed, even while the related concepts (high-quality software that you can adapt to your needs, even if you don’t get the pre-adapted code to all your stuff) has become absolutely universal. I also think that’s a great thing.
I’ve long been sceptical of the Affero-style licence terms. It certainly DOES work in the sense that it (and GPL3 which makes use of it) is a forbidden license in many companies. It probably does not work in the sense of letting the software be broadly used and forcing change/wrapper source to be published.
Fundamentally, I’m opposed for copyright to be applied to usage limits, as opposed to distribution limits. It’s fine to prohibit distribution of derivative works without source. It’s annoying (probably legal, but I prefer to just not try) to prohibit USE of code that you legitimately acquired and then privately modified. I think it’s fundamentally non-free software if I’m disallowed from using a modification for my own purposes (even if those purposes are accessible by others).
I know of zero court cases or even successful threats of such, which hinge on this clause. Companies who are careful just avoid it, companies who aren’t ignore it (and either aren’t caught or the copyright owner realizes it’s not worth pursuing). Note that simple compilation or repackaging is a modification, so would trigger this, just as distributing a compiled or repackaged version does.
The fundamental tradeoff of getting your software/library to be popular and well used versus limiting the ways your customers can extend and use your software in less-publically-visible ways has changed in the last 30 years. I think RMSs original goals (no printers you can’t hack and recompile) have failed, even while the related concepts (high-quality software that you can adapt to your needs, even if you don’t get the pre-adapted code to all your stuff) has become absolutely universal. I also think that’s a great thing.