RFC: Relicensing OpenBSC under AGPLv3

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Jan Lübbe jluebbe at lasnet.de
Fri May 28 10:18:28 UTC 2010


Hi everyone,

On Wed, 2010-05-19 at 21:28 +0200, Harald Welte wrote: 
> The only controversial question to me is "your modified version must
> prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer
> network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive
> the Corresponding Source".
> 
> 1) does a gsm network count as computer network? i'd say yes.
> 2) is using a gsm network 'interacting with it remotely'? I'd also say yes
> 3) what does 'prominently offer' mean in the context of GSM?  We don't want
>    the operator to spam their users with advertisement SMS just to know
>    that they can get the soruce code, after all.
> 
> Notwithstanding those open questions, such a network operator would always
> have the option of simply sending back his changes for integration in the
> official project - and thus he would no longer use a modified version which
> then means there is no need for the prominent notice / download at all.

While i agree with Harald's goal of making network operators of public
networks publish their changes (and that the GPL alone does nothing
here), I'm not sure using the AGPLv3 for that is straight-forward.

I don't think the GPL uses "modified version" in the sense of "different
from mainline", but rather every change to the source code creates a new
modified version. So publishing the source code or having the changes
merged to some mainline version does not remove the "modified flag".
So every developer would be running a modified version and so be
required to follow Section 13 by informing all users directly.

Instead, we could add an additional permission the the license
statement, which allows everyone who would need "prominently offer the
source all users" to *instead* fulfill this requirement by publishing
the corresponding source on their website. We could also ask (but not
require) them to notify the mailing list.

> a) Do you think re-licensing to AGPLv3 is a good idea?

As above, i fully agree with your goal. But I'm not convinced yet.

Also, the GPLv3 has changed how it relates to Patents, which may be
relevant to a lot of GSM work. I can't say i understand what Section 11
really means for network operators. Their lawyers may decide it's too
risky and not use OpenBSC/Osmocom.

> b) If you have contributed, would you re-license your code under AGPLv3?

You obviously have vastly more experience with the GPL, so I'd agree to
re-license if you think everything will be fine. :)

Best regards,
-- 
Jan Lübbe <jluebbe at lasnet.de>            http://sicherheitsschwankung.de
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