On 11/30/2012 11:50 AM, Joshua Gay wrote:
Supporting github is a ruinous compromise because their policies
work
against our aims in the free software movement in the long term.
Actually, why is that so? (Serious question, perhaps there is some
information about GitHub policies that I am lacking.)
I don't think the mere fact that GitHub is a proprietary network
service (the core of Bradley's original objection to my use of it) is
in conflict with copyleft-next in some substantive sense. GPLv2 by
general understanding, and GPLv3 very explicitly, permit the
development of proprietary web applications out of adaptations of GPL
code. The issue I think Bradley was originally making was that the
future of strong copyleft licensing was likely to be one in which an
Affero-like requirement would be standard, or at least that it
*should* be standard, and it would therefore be unseemly to use a
proprietary network service in some major way in the drafting of such
a license given the existence of *presumed*-free (in a Franklin Street
Statement sense) alternatives (as well as known free alternatives).
Currently, copyleft-next has no Affero-like requirement, however.
While as I've previously noted I intend for there to be an Affero-like
flavor of copyleft-next I do not believe it should be a default provision.
- RF