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Comment by cthor | Hacker News Reader

That's why we have GPL.

Does the GPL do enough to protect us from private extraction of the commons? I used to advocate for 0BSD but at this point it seems like we need something like the AGPL or Parity.[0]

[0]: https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity

AGPL closes the SAAS loophole. Outside of that, what "private extraction of the commons" is left to cover?

Parity license looks like a super aggressive and untested version of AGPL. I can't see what benefit using it over AGPL would be.

Prosperity license is at odds with the point of free software and almost certainly untenable.

> AGPL closes the SAAS loophole.

It doesn't.

Can you clarify? That's like the whole point of the AGPL. It not doing that would be quite surprising.

I blogged about this here:

https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.h...

If you're interested in network-copyleft more generally, make sure you compare AGPL to OSL:

https://opensource.org/licenses/OSL-3.0

For a lot of server-side software AGPL is not enough either, should be API Copyleft License [1] instead.

[1] https://apicopyleft.com/

I'm one of the contributors to the API Copyleft License. Are you using it for a public project? I'd like to feature that kind of work on https://apicopyleft.com.

> but requires you to contribute source code for changes, additions, and software that you build with it, other than applications.

What does this part mean? Would you please dumb it down for me, perhaps with an example?

Keep reading! That is just the Purpose section, which summarizes the license. The specific sections affecting copyleft are Copyleft, Prototypes, Applications, and Contributing. I think they are slightly easier to read and understanding on the master branch of the development repository: https://github.com/kemitchell/api-copyleft-license/blob/mast...

> The purpose of this rule is to encourage cooperative development of this software, minimizing duplication of effort across competing substitutes.

Ah, I understand it now! Thank you.

That is interesting. I used to like AGPL but recently switch to advocating 0BSD. What made you switch away from 0BSD?

My gripe with copyleft was that it used copyright, which I wanted to avoid participating in. Unfortunately, this means that you're making it very easy for others to take your work, obfuscate it, and receive copyright protection for their "derivative".

My goal was to remove copyright from my work, but using permissive licenses seemed to instead mean "I'll give up my copyright protection, but you can take my work and receive copyright protection and sue others".

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