The falsehoods of anti-AGPL propaganda (2020)
I dislike AGPL for 2 reasons.<p>1. Every major free software license I can think of before AGPL triggered its source provisions on distribution. (I said &quot;major&quot; because I haven&#x27;t examined every free software license, but I don&#x27;t actually know of any that weren&#x27;t triggered solely by distribution).<p>Placing conditions in your license on what you did with the software other than distributing it were usually considered to make your license a non-free license.<p>2. I can&#x27;t think of a principled way to justify AGPL&#x27;s triggering specifically on &quot;remote interaction through a computer network&quot;.<p>Say I take a weather model program that is under AGPL, modify it to work better for forecasting weather in my region, and start a service to provide local forecasts. Users provide their address, and for a fee I provide them with a local forecast for that location.<p>There are several different ways I might offer this service.<p>A. They can stop by my kiosk in the mall, where I have several PCs running the model. They can enter their information on one of the PCs and it prints their forecast on a printer connected directly to the PC.<p>B. They can send me a mail via the post office asking for a forecast. I mail one back via the post office.<p>C. They can send me an email asking for a forecast. I email one back.<p>D. Same as A, except the printer is not connected directly to the PC. It is connected via a WiFi network.<p>E. I have one PC in the kiosk, with several terminals connected to it via WiFi. The customers use the terminals.<p>F. Similar to E, but I have the terminals spread out at several convenient locations throughout the mall, all communicating via WiFi with the PC running the model.<p>G. The PC serves a web page via a public WiFi network I offer in the mall. This network has no internet connectivity.<p>H. The PC serves a web page over the internet, but you have to be at the kiosk to actually order and receive a forecast.<p>I. The PC serves a web page over the internet, on which you can order and receive you forecast from anywhere.<p>J. The call me on the phone, give me their address, and I read the results to them. This is really 3 cases. J1, they and I are using modern cell phones. J2, they and I are using modern land lines. J3, we are both in an area with a very old all analog phone system (so while the phone system may be a network, it is not a &quot;computer network&quot;).<p>Under AGPL I definitely have to provide source for case I.<p>It is not clear for cases C, D, E, F, G, H, or J. They all raise questions of what is an interaction, what is remote, what is a computer, what is a network, and what is a computer network.<p>I do not have to provide source in cases A and B.<p>In all cases the same overall thing is being accomplished: people ask for a forecast using the modified AGPL program running on my computer, the program runs, and the output is given to the person.<p>I find it aesthetically displeasing and philosophically ridiculous to have a license depend so much on the minutia of exactly how the information between the user and the program is transmitted.