[Koha] Proposal To Switch Koha's License to GPLv3 and AGPLv3 or AGPLv3

[Christopher Nighswonger]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:47 AM, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> No, that additional requirement is one of the disadvantages.  AGPLv3
> is still a fairly new licence and as far as I know, it's not yet
> entirely clear what is meant by "access", particularly for a modular
> system like Koha.  It might mean that everyone who sees a page is
> entitled to the 227Mb source tarball.  Who wants to pay for those
> downloads?

Github and the like provide very simple solutions to this problem both with ease
of administration and ease of cost. AGPLv3 does not specify (see my previous
response to Lars' post.) Besides, there are hosting plans available that provide
unlimited bandwidth for very, very few $$$ per month if the FTP route was a
necessity.

<snip>

>
> Fundamentally, AGPLv3 is based on an absurd idea that one can "ensure
> cooperation with the community" (source: AGPLv3 preamble).  However,
> cooperation by definition must be voluntary (source:
> ICA.coop/coop/principles.html ) so legal compulsion is not cooperation.

A careful reading of the second paragraph of the Preamble of GPLv2
(the current Koha license) will reveal the fact that the entire
purpose of the license is to ensure cooperation with the goal of
ensuring at a minimum three things: "...the freedom to distribute
copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish),
that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you
can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs..."

It appears that any form of licensing is an attempt to ensure
cooperation of some sort among some people. *All* licensing is, in
fact, some form of coercion, period. The unfortunate fact of life is
that there is somebody, somewhere who will do wrong even if you will
not. It would be wonderful if it were otherwise. The we would not need
licenses... or laws for that matter.

By adopting *any* sort of license, then, we are "ensuring cooperation"
at some level.
The entire purpose of any GNU license is to provide "legal compulsion" of those
who would use FOSS to abide by the wishes of the copyright holder regarding
that code. FOSS would patently fail if there were no way to enforce the desire
for the code to be free and open source. So the argument against the use of
legal compulsion is really self-defeating in this instance. We cannot
license *and*
avoid the use of "legal compulsion."

>
> So may we postpone the rest of this discussion to post-3.2.0?

As I stated in my original proposal: We are already very active atm, and now is
the time to at least begin discussing this change.

Kind Regards,
Chris