Walking Three Tightropes

On Open Enterprise blog.

Google Squirms

Google seems allergic to the AGPL:

So, first AGPL was not good enough for Google because it was not OSI-approved. That limited its popularity... Now it is OSI-approved. Still, it is not popular enough to be accepted in the Google closed open source hosting site?

...

C'mon Chris, give developers the ability of using AGPL for their own projects in Google Code. Your fight for no proliferation of licenses is something I subscribe to, but AGPL is the license of the future, no matter if Google likes it or not. And I can guarantee you it will become even more popular if it is accepted in Google Code...

AGPL Gets OK from OSI

On Open Enterprise blog.

Approving the AGPL: Funambol to the Rescue

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Enterprise Interview: Fabrizio Capobianco

On Open Enterprise blog.

Mobile 2.0? I Hope Not....

Fabrizio Capobianco reckons today is a frabjous day:

1&1, the largest web hoster in the world, went live with a mobile email solution last week in Germany. They are using Funambol, integrated with OpenXchange. Open source on all levels...

Why is it the start of a revolution?

Because this not a carrier, though they are offering mobile email directly to their users. An ISP offering mobile messaging... The start of a big shift in this market, where you will get your email pushed to your phone directly from the company that "owns" your email. In 99.99% of the cases, that is not your mobile carrier...

I agree that this is big - unfortunately.

I say unfortunately because the company making this move is 1&1, from whom I have had some of the worst service ever. At one point, as a special concession, 1&1 agreed to upgrade my online storage to the level that everyone else was getting - as a long-standing customer, I was of course being penalised for my loyalty - but only if I *faxed* them a formal request. The idea of automatic upgrades, or even upgrades after a telephone request was just too much to ask, it seemed.

So while I applaud the move in theory, I would advise people to wait until companies with more respect for the customer get involved.

Licence to Thrill

As I've written elsewhere, licences are not peripheral to free software, they lie at its very heart. So argy-bargy over the new draft of GNU GPLv3 was bound to bring some interesting further developments, and that's what we have here:

the strategy of the FSF is simple (I am paraphrasing here, nobody said these exact words to me):

1. FACT: we simply could not get GPLv3 out with the ASP provision or it would have been DOA. It is hard to disagree...

2. TRICK: we are creating another specific license that includes the ASP provision (AGPLv2) and we added in GPLv3 that the two will be compatible. The end result is license proliferation, but not license incompatibility which is the key issue.

3. GOAL: GET AGPL TO BE THE REAL NEXT GPL

GPLv3: Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mewed

Judging by the some articles, everything is now sweetness and light regarding GNU GPLv3, with those big buddies Richard and Linus gazing langorously in each other's (metaphorical) eye.

But someone sees things a little differently:

Last night, I read the last draft of GPLv3 on my cell phone during dinner in Orlando. I went looking for the provision they had in the last draft, the one that closes the GPLv2 ASP loophole that forced me to create HPL. In a nutshell, it is the ability of running GPLv2 software as a service (SaaS) without returning any changes to the community, because distribution of software as a service might not technically be considered distribution of software (therefore circumventing the copyleft clause that made open source what it is today). That is what Google does, making gazillions of dollars thanks to Linux and open source but keeping its secret sauce concealed from the rest of the world (but contributing in many other ways, therefore cleaning its conscience, I guess).

The provision is not there. Gone. They dropped the ball. Actually, it has been made very clear that the ASP loophole is not a loophole anymore. It is perfectly fine to change GPLv3 software and offer it to the public as a service, without returning the changes to the community.

This is an interesting point, although I tend to view SaaS as yesterday's big idea, so it may not be a major problem. See also the comments on the above posting for more (and more coherent) thoughts on this.

Update: More negative vibes here. It will be interesting to see how this develops. I've not read the latest draft yet, so don't really have a strong view either way.