I don’t get this argument. “Here’s a legal document we wrote that says that you’re allowed to redistribute our code. But aside from it we’d like to you to not redistribute it on platforms we don’t like for whatever reason. But we won’t spell it out explicitly in the document itself because reasons, instead we’re guilt tripping everyone who does”.
I respect developers right to put any restrictions on the code they share with the world. But I believe it should either be explicit or not restricted at all. Either write the license that says exactly what you want or otherwise don’t shame people into the desired behavior.
Edit: one could even add a more generic statement to the license stating that it’s forbidden to share the code on any platform that would use it to train their AIs per their ToS, so you don’t need to single out GitHub and potentially others in the future.
Ethics is subjective, the law less so. Most people don’t find GitHub to be unethical so the author will have a hard time convincing people without using the license terms.
Well, that's the exact reason why they wrote this page: to explain to people why they think GitHub is unethical, and maybe convince them. It's the same as calls to boycott various other companies: they haven't necessarily done anything illegal, but if you convince enough people not to use their products/services anymore, you might make an impact...
i think it is quite scary that so many in here would just not honor a simple "please don't do it."
it is a wish. if someone says "please don't wear shoes in my home" i hope you would honor their very simple and understandable personal wish without setting up a contract for it?
My aunt once told me "Please don't think negatively of religious people."
Stallman would prefer I not use any closed source software to read his blog, including OS, drivers, web browser, etc.
People routinely ignore unreasonable requests. Asking me to not wear shoes in your home is reasonable. Asking me not to give a copy to Joe after telling me I can give a copy to whomever I want is unreasonable.
How is it unreasonable to want you to not host someone's code on one explicit other platform?
We already established no one is forcing you and if you don't respect the author you don't get to be respected for your decision to ignore them and will earn snarky remarks. (and rightfully so, in my opinion)
I see it more like an artist telling me “please hang this picture in this orientation” but I prefer it differently and don’t see any reason why me hanging it the way I want in my home affects the author. My copy on GitHub doesn’t detract from their copy.
The author might also be using this a stop-gap until a FOSS licences comes out with similar terms, but don't want to make the current license nonfree because that has different complications.
A licensor cannot predict the future. When the GPL was written decades ago, nobody predicted that BigTech would start using it on their servers to offer it as "services", and claim that they didn't need to distribute the source code of the customisations they made because they were (technically) not distributing the software itself but only running it on their servers. Anyone who understood the intent and philosophy of the GPL license understood this as a bogus and unethical argument. But it was believed to be legally tenable (1). So the AGPL license was created to counter this move and preserve the original philosophy of the GPL that users of a software should have access to the source code.
(1) Though I don't know if this has been actually tested in court - courts in India have more freedom to broadly interpret social contracts like the GPL, unlike the US courts, and a positive outcome in favour of upholding the license even in such cases could be possible).
> Anyone who understood the intent and philosophy of the GPL license understood this as a bogus and unethical argument.
I disagree here. The idea, intent, philosophy is one (crucial) thing, the resulting practical artefact (here the license) is another. It works exactly as it was designed to work.
People/companies modifying GPL software for their own use (internal or external) without redistributing the software itself (so without requirement to redistribute the code) existed before SAAS grew on, only at the time, the small scale of this made it a bargain that was "interesting" only depending on one's capacity/hubris to maintain an internal fork on their own.
*aaS hugely tipped the scale, and the side effects, but the mechanics are the same.
And yes, that may not have been the original intent, and the AGPL is as valid a license as a reaction to provide a new tool more in line with the original intent, but that doesn't make the use of the existing GPL all within what it actually enables anyone to, invalid or unethical.
(but maybe only in a specific perspective of the framework of the original intent)
When you decide a license, you can't know what currently existing or future platforms will some day start to violate an aspect of the license or of copyright itself. Does it make sense to add a retroactive clause, then?
I respect developers right to put any restrictions on the code they share with the world. But I believe it should either be explicit or not restricted at all. Either write the license that says exactly what you want or otherwise don’t shame people into the desired behavior.
Edit: one could even add a more generic statement to the license stating that it’s forbidden to share the code on any platform that would use it to train their AIs per their ToS, so you don’t need to single out GitHub and potentially others in the future.