[Committee-d] GPLv3 Last Call - Suggestions for AGPLv3

[rufo guerreschi]

On Jun 1, 2007, at 7:55 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

> The purpose of the Affero GPL is to make sure that modifications
> put into public use become available to the community.
> I think it achieves its purpose.

That is a great goal, but I would challenge that AGPL actually does  
"make sure" that what you say happens.
It is more like a "Pretty Good Certainty" (PGC), as Zimmerman would  
have called it, :-)
In fact, as someone told me some months back ;-), there is no way for  
a user to verify if he is really being given the actual code of the  
modifications to which he has been granted public access.

Given the kind of societal functions running on certain telematic  
system nowadays, Pretty Good Certainty may not be good enough for  
many critical systems.
Can we trust or even hope that governments or parliaments of the  
world will fill in with the necessary regulations to move from  
"Pretty Good Certainty" to "Adequately Good Certainty"?
Or should the FSF come out with it's own way of doing things, which  
then other institutions in society may follow?

>
> I do not want the license to try to do your other three goals.  Partly
> I think they are wrong.  Partly I think they are ok, but but a free
> software license should not try to do those things.
>
>     We try to address all three of these problems not through a  
> license,
>     but through a Code Access Policies and Download Agreements.
>
> That is the right way to do these things, in the cases where they
> ought to be done.

It will be a pleasure, if you have the time, to see with you which of  
those three goals are coherent with the free software movement goals,  
so that our activity may in practice, in strategy and in principles  
align itself with the free software movement.

Rufo

------------------------------
Rufo Guerreschi
rg at telematicsfreedom.org
cell/sms +393357545620
skype: rguerreschi
www.telematicsfreedom.org