Mold 1.7 Released But May Need To Change Software License If Funding Not Secured

[mdedetrich]

Tax fraud is illegal. The copyright holders of a software have every right to license the software however they see fit. This is a absurd comparison.



Wrong again. All major distributions ship AGPL'ed software and lots of people use it just fine. AGPL is a FSF, OSI, Fedora and Debian approved free and open source license. You seem to be hating the notion of copyleft licenses. Tough luck to you.

I work at a company as a full time open source developer (that is my job is to spend my entire time contributing upstream to open source projects that our company uses). Regardless of whatever stance that FSF, OSI or any of these companies take, we avoid "software available" licenses like AGPL OR BSL like the plague. Even on basic legal reasons, AGPL has never been tested in court and the license is full of so many legal weasel words that no sane company would touch the thing with a 10 foot pole. AGPL is a garbage license, no one should even touch that thing. If you actually speak with lawyers on this (pro tip, I had to in my previous company) you will very quickly realize this. The worst thing about AGPL is it pretends to be an open source license when its really not (I don't know whether this is intentional or not but its also irrelevant). I really wish the license would just burn and die.

After having to hard fork a project because it changed its license from ASFL 2 to BSL (i.e. mongo/elastic license) I am in full agreement with the sentiment that Developer12 is making. Either make sure your business model works with open source, or just have it proprietary (or at least have the initial release of the software as source available otherwise you create a bait and switch, you can then change it to open source later when you find its sustainable).

While I completely understand the need to make a proper business and in this case we seem to be dealing with an individual rather than an entire company so its more forgivable, license changes like this always cause so many issues. There is an entirely different argument about how companies don't contribute back to open source (i.e. they don't even have positions like mine) but this doesn't help.

Also wrt tax fraud, you strawmanned what Developer12 was saying. He was talking about tax avoidance/tax minimisation which is the completely legal way to pay as little tax as possible, tax fraud is whats illegal. Tax avoidance/minimisation is completely legal but also ethically/morally dubious (i.e. typical case with millionaires/billionaires is that they pay themselves the bare minimum as a wage so they pay almost no income tax while they take a equity line of credit against their large asset portfolio at an ultra low interest rate which has zero tax. This is completely legal but its how you get people that are worth gargantuan amount of money only paying like 1-2% effective tax rate.

[RahulSundaram]

Wrong again. The AGPL isn't copyleft. It's a legal catastrophe.

Random twitter links prove nothing. AGPL is a copyleft and open source license. You merely disliking it doesn't change what it is. Sorry.

[RahulSundaram]

After having to hard fork a project because it changed its license from ASFL 2 to BSL (i.e. mongo/elastic license) I am in full agreement with the sentiment that Developer12 is making

It is not the sentiment that's the problem. It is the completely inaccurate statements he is making. If he merely was arguing that it is a bad policy, sure that's just an opinion but claiming it isn't a open source or copyleft license but merely source available is just plainly wrong. You aren't agreeing with him on that.

Also wrt tax fraud, you strawmanned what Developer12 was saying. He was talking about tax avoidance/tax minimisation .

I strawmanned nothing. He clearly used the word tax fraud. He didn't say tax avoidance or tax minimization. I directly quoted and replied to what he said.

[mdedetrich]

It is not the sentiment that's the problem. It is the completely inaccurate statements he is making. If he merely was arguing that it is a bad policy, sure that's just an opinion but claiming it isn't a open source or copyleft license but merely source available is just plainly wrong. You aren't agreeing with him on that.

The problem is that even on the strict definition of source available, its not completely true with AGPL and this goes into the specifics of how the license is worded.

I strawmanned nothing. He clearly used the word tax fraud. He didn't say tax avoidance or tax minimization. I directly quoted and replied to what he said.

While technically true, its clear from the context of his sentence he was implying that companies getting away with minimising tax and the only way that companies can consistently get away with it, is if its legal (and in the context of companies this by using tax havens, etc etc). That is called tax minimisation/avoidance (such companies hire swath's of accountants and lawyers to actually make sure that they don't get into legal trouble).

[RahulSundaram]

The problem is that even on the strict definition of source available, its not completely true with AGPL and this goes into the specifics of how the license is worded.

Unclear what you mean here. I am noting that according to OSI, AGPL is an open source license. That organization has plenty of lawyers who have reviewed it and accepted it as such. Claiming that the license is not an open source license as Developer12 did it just factually incorrect. Source available is a term reserved for licenses that aren't free and open source licenses but have the source available anyway under much more restrictive conditions like Microsoft shared source license. They are not the same category. Muddying up the waters by equating them doesn't help at all.

While technically true, its clear from the context of his sentence he was implying that companies getting away with minimising tax and the only way that companies can consistently get away with it, is if its legal (and in the context of companies this by using tax havens, etc etc). That is called tax minimisation/avoidance (such companies hire swath's of accountants and lawyers to actually make sure that they don't get into legal trouble).

I replied to what he said, if he meant something else, he should have said that and that wasn't clear to me at all especially since companies end up in the news often enough with tax fraud. Even reading it as tax avoidance when he clearly said tax fraud, this is still a poor analogy IMO. No company or even an individual wants to pay extra taxes more than they are legally required to. The problem here isn't the company or people taking advantage of tax benefits, it is the tax policy.

[Developer12]

Random twitter links prove nothing. AGPL is a copyleft and open source license. You merely disliking it doesn't change what it is. Sorry.

Perhaps you should get off your dumb ass and read the text I copied from those twitter links, for your convenience.

[qarium]

The german language has many positive qualities, but the Geschlechtisierung is probably the worst. I have zero idea how to prove removing the heavy linguistic gender-boxing in the language would help (other than the obvious progress for being respectful to the people I wrote about above), but a quick web search about pay gaps in Germany show you are not paying attention to the gender-biased social inequality in your own country.
It looks like both the German government and the Europen Union recognise the income inequality in germany is one of the worst in the entire continent (18 to 24% less income to biological females depending on the year since 2000, or nearly 50% less in couples with children). "Women [in Germany] earn on average 79 cents for every euro a man makes per hour, resulting in a gender pay gap of 21 %. The gender pension gap is 38 %."
I really cannot take someone seriously (on this topic) who would advocate clinging to such unnecessary outdated choices of language to categorise a person's job title (or any important role in society) just because they have a penis or vagina, especially given these statistics. In my opinion it is time to evolve beyond that.

i think people should pay for the result of the work same result should result in same payment.
no matter if the worker is female or male...

but now you think you are right... no of course not. here is why:

males have 40% more muscles/physical strength thats why woman fail in sports test all the time if they are forced to compete with males.

also women in average worldwide have 5 IQ points less intelligence in intelligence tests.

and if you make real performance tests in skills and knowledge in any topic males always win by more than 25% better results. thats why women fail in performance recruitment tests of universities if they are forced to compete with males.

also 75% of all taxed income worldwide is generated by males and only 25% of the taxed income is generated by women.

thats why in a meritocratic world order males need to earn more money because they generate better result.

and remember what i said first: the same result should be paid the same and better result should be paid better.

now lets talk about the hypothetical scenario that women get the same money then they can only get the same money if they steal the workforce of "males" because women can not generate the same result means males need to pay subsidies to women. and i see these subsidies as complete wrong by this women plain and simple steal the life-force of males like Vampires drink the blood of their victims. this results in males become demotivated and because of this they stop performing well in the job. because they see they perform better and have better results but in the end inferior women get all the praise and all the money in other words Parasites get the money instead of the person who really deserve the money. this results in the real person who does the real work they quit because they do not get the reward they deserve.

[Rabiator]

Wrong again. The AGPL isn't copyleft. It's a legal catastrophe. The FSF wanted to have their cake and eat it to by "closing the saas hole" but somehow also creating a "free" licence. They produced a licence that's essentially impossible to comply with while also being non-free.

It's proven itself to be a wonderful gift from Stallman to the proprietary software sellers of the world.

It means an extra context in which the service provider must offer access to the source code. That is certainly some extra effort, but far from impossible.
Quoting from the AGPL:

...if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge...

If your program displays a link to a server from where you can download the source code, I think that requirement would be fulfilled. As I understand it, it would not even have to be your own server. Linking to something like Github would be sufficient.
Of course you would have to regularly check if the download link is still working, and fix problems in a timely manner. If necessary, by moving to another online repository and changing the notice in the software.

Anyone who makes a derivative version and offers it as SAAS would be under the same obligation, but that would not be your problem.

One would do well to consider the burden of A) how to make a linker a quine, or perhaps a quine-generator, for any given input program and B) ensuring every change to it's own source code is reflected.

Creating a quine seems completely redundant, see my reasoning above.

[Developer12]

It means an extra context in which the service provider must offer access to the source code. That is certainly some extra effort, but far from impossible.
Quoting from the AGPL:

If your program displays a link to a server from where you can download the source code, I think that requirement would be fulfilled. As I understand it, it would not even have to be your own server. Linking to something like Github would be sufficient.
Of course you would have to regularly check if the download link is still working, and fix problems in a timely manner. If necessary, by moving to another online repository and changing the notice in the software.

Anyone who makes a derivative version and offers it as SAAS would be under the same obligation, but that would not be your problem.

Creating a quine seems completely redundant, see my reasoning above.

This analysis is flatly wrong. See: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...10#post1358210

The real-world impact of the AGPL has been that the licence and everything it is applied to is considered radioactive, while still being "open source" (while in fact being "source avalable"). It's allowed countless startups to open-wash themselves and their code while demanding a fee for a less restrictive licence. For more reading on this trend, see: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2022/09/23/dead-end/ The AGPL is by far the most widely used licence in this scenario, due to it's deceptive nature and deeply broken logic.

[Rabiator]

This analysis is flatly wrong. See: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...10#post1358210

The real-world impact of the AGPL has been that the licence and everything it is applied to is considered radioactive, while still being "open source" (while in fact being "source avalable"). It's allowed countless startups to open-wash themselves and their code while demanding a fee for a less restrictive licence. For more reading on this trend, see: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2022/09/23/dead-end/ The AGPL is by far the most widely used licence in this scenario, due to it's deceptive nature and deeply broken logic.

It would be nice if you were more specific in your argument. Your quotes are rather imprecise. The wall of text from a Twitter user "marcan42" (who has deleted their account since) does not specify in detail where he sees the AGPL being non-free. At best, I can guess that marcan42 sees the requirement of "prominently offer all users..." as being incompatible with the combination of Freedom 0 and Freedom 1.

Is that the argument you make your own? If so, I can see your reasoning. But I still think it is a rather fundamentalist attitude, and I would not consider the AGPL wholly disqualified as open source.

The essay of Stephen O'Grady is even less helpful. It talks a lot about values and motivations, but not about where the AGPL in particular is non-free. If we are discussing a particular license in the context of "is this a free license?", the (legal) details and their specific ramifications are absolutely something that needs to be covered. O'Grady does not even mention the AGPL by name.