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

[MJ Ray]

Christopher Nighswonger wrote:
> In light of the momentum the community has built up in the area of
> change in recent months, now would be a good time to resume licensing
> discussions and bring them to a final resolve.

I cannot contribute fully to this discussion at this time.  Please can
we try to limit the number of simultaneous disruptive changes?  As you
know, we have 3.2 releasing, new websites and urgent trademark
challenges which I'd like to contribute to and my work is already
spread a bit too thin.  Please can we leave this until after 3.2.0?

Is there code under *GPLv3 which we want to integrate imminently?

[...]
> AGPLv3 carries the added advantage of the *additional* requirement that
> changes, etc. to the code be made available (at least) to those who
> access the changed code. This gives us quite a measure of protection
> more against Koha related code becoming locked up on a saas platform
> somewhere in the nebulous "cloud."

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?

We asked questions about this and other vagueness to FSF during the
AGPL drafting and the questions were never answered, as far as I know.
The drafting process was hampered by use of a buggy, inaccessible and
undocumented application called "stet" instead of a nice easy wiki (yes,
mediawiki would have been better than stet).

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.

To use a more common phrase, you can lead a horse to water but you
cannot make it drink.  The GPL already leads us to the water.  AGPL is
an attempt to make all drink and is doomed to fail.  If we force code
publication, bad vendors will simply lock the database, keep passwords
secret, move some code off to the other side of APIs and so on.  Maybe
even do other tricks to hamper use of the published code.

Meanwhile, we'd be making Koha more difficult and more costly for
friendly people to use, by using a less understood license with more
requirements to fulfil.

So, we hurt our friends without stopping our enemies.  Why do it?

In the past, I've advocated the share-alike type provisions of the
GPL, as well as using BSD-style share-enabled terms, but I feel AGPLv3
share-forced terms go against other vital principles of freedom.

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

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  Webmaster and LMS developer at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op