Re: [GNUnet-developers] AGPL is up to us, says RMS

[Christian Grothoff]

On 04/14/2017 07:48 PM, ng0 wrote:
> carlo von lynX transcribed 0.5K bytes:
>>> I support the change to AGPL3.
>>
>> Since no argumentation against the change has
>> surfaced, I guess we can proceed.
>>
> 
> I'm not so sure. This list is sometimes very slow, and as we know most
> discussions happen in 1:1 messages rather than on the list.
> I think with the knowledge that other projects and their changes depend on
> this, we should have a 5 - 8 weeks deadline for replies.

I agree, and would in fact appreciate more discussion on the matter. My
main concerns are exposing which version someone is running (information
leakage) and how/where exactly any AGPL provisions might actually apply.
 I do not quite see how the license change helps until the code actually
somewhere has a mechanism to point other peers to the source. So how
exactly this could be done should be discussed as well. Until we have
this, I see no real harm but also no real benefit in Lynx's proposal.

> Once gnunet goes AGPL3, it can not be transformed back to GPL3 due to
> one of the paragraphs/numbers in the AGPL3. The other way around works
> perfectly fine, at least that's how it was presented to me.
> But I'm not a lawyer.

This is semi-correct. Switching from GPLv3+ to AGPL does not seem to
require consent of all copyright holders. However, due to the
centralization of copyrights with GNUnet e.V. the association would be
in a position to reverse course later if we later find out that this was
a bad move.

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