[foundation-board] CKAN licence?

Rufus Pollock rufus.pollock at okfn.org
Wed Aug 24 17:47:48 UTC 2011


On 24 August 2011 15:55, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 3:04 PM, James Casbon <casbon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Its AGPL it's in the README, I was handicapped by trying to use my phone.
>
> Well. That leads to two questions:
>
> a) Which README? Not the one in the source repo.

It was in the README but got I see it was accidentally removed by
person doing a docs refactor a couple of weeks ago. Now back:
<https://bitbucket.org/okfn/ckan>

(A bit confusingly we maintain a github mirror which is not up to date
and hence contains the licnese text in its README:
https://github.com/okfn/ckan).

> b) Why the AGPL? Yes, I realise this could be a long conversation, so
> let me open with my extreme preference for the Apache Licence. Why?
> Because to me "open" means "you can use it for any purpose". The AGPL
> is not a licence that supports that. There's a longer argument which
> is about barriers to adoption and the value of non-coerced
> contribution.

Open in relation to us means compliant with Open Source Definition
which the AGPL does. There is a much bigger discussion, which you have
begun on, around share-alike clauses which I suggest taking up when we
meet in person :-)

Rufus




More information about the foundation-board mailing list