[open-bibliography] Crowdsourcing bibliographic data

Tue Aug 17 19:24:19 UTC 2010

William Waites wrote:
>  On 10-08-17 17:57, Tom Morris wrote:
> > That's not what the AGPL is about [...] It doesn't say anything at
> > all about how you provide your network service, whether it can depend
> > on other non-free software, or anything like that.
> 
> I really don't want to get sidetracked into a debate
> about software licensing if it can be sensibly avoided.

Then stop posting flamebait!

> But, open services are exactly the intended consequence
> of using the AGPL. [...]

Maybe (not sure how you determine other user's intentions), but it
doesn't actually *do* it.  It *can't* do it.  It covers only the software
running the service, not the data or anything.  This is acknowledged
in http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html which says clearly:

  One problem which the GNU Affero GPL does not address is the problem
  of Software as a Service (SaaS). It is impossible, as far as we
  know, to address this problem with a software license. [END QUOTE]

This is why I'm unhappy if someone promotes the obnoxious Network
Interaction clause of the AGPL as needed for open services.  It's one
mostly-solved part of the problem and a bit of an expensive and clumsy
way to try to achieve open services.  It's a sidetrack and a big
distraction from open data and open access.

I feel http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd/ is a much more rounded
explanation and it's far easier to understand.

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and developer for hire at | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op