zlacker

The freedoms we promote require users to run locally installed software, which people are no longer able to do for important applications.

>>kazina+(OP)
Yeah this is the elephant in the room. Running a powerful, centralized web service that gets accessed by many users on many different clients with everything synchronized and patched and updated in one place is such a better model than self-hosted for so many software use cases.

Edit: simplified.

>>apante+mk
And then the service stops, for business reasons, and the user is left holding the bag.

This is very much the opposite of the spirit of free software. It's a feudal system.

>>apante+mk
Sure if not taking privacy ("is my data being sold to competitors and anyone who pays? Will it leak to the web?") and strategic vision ("will this critical dependency be shutdown tomorrow") into consideration.

Other than that it's cool, sure.

>>kazina+(OP)
No it doesn't, that's what the AGPL is for.

>>ric2b+ML1
Unfortunately, the Affero changes to the GPL render it a nonfree license.

Free software licenses all have one thing in common: they speak only to redistribution, not to use. To use a free program, you only have to agree to the disclaimer (that if something goes wrong, it is at your own risk).

AGPL prohibits you from running a modified version of the program, if its functionality is publicly accessible, unless you release the modifications. That makes it an EULA.

No free software license requires you to release your modifications if the program is not redistributed.

The problem of siloed saas applications infringing on user freedoms cannot be attacked using copyright, without resorting to non-free licensing, which is an unacceptable.

Note that not everyone agrees that the GPL is a free license, in the first place. Software is maximally free if you can do anything with it you want, including incorporating it into proprietary software.

Many FOSS developers skip copyleft licenses and use MIT, BSD and such, myself included.

I can swallow the idea that GPLed software is free, but AGPL is out of the question.