Possibility of changing to the AGPL license

[mflorell]

I have talked with a couple of other GPL licensed project maintainers and I am considering changing the release license of VICIDIAL to the AGPL. Please let me know what you think and we can discuss here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_Gen ... ic_License

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html

[AlexR]

Matt. If I understand correctly what you are trying to achieve with the AGPL License is basically that anyone who uses Vicidial includes the full version, and mentions it, and do not charge for its usage.

If this is correct i would encourage you to do so, As it was noted elsewhere in the forums there are even companies who are selling the software as their own. Which is absolutely not right.


Thank you for asking our thoughts on this,


Alejandro

[mflorell]

Not quite, if a company offers VICIDIAL as a hosted solution, they could charge for it, but they would have to offer the source code as a download for any user of their system. Currently under the GPL, they do not have to share the source code with their online customers.

[Trying]

I fully support this.

[devafree]

Hello

I too fully endorse this.

Regards

Devafree

[mflorell]

Here is a new article on Slashdot about this license:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... /20/049258

[Op3r]

So that means when somebody modified the interface he is obligated to share the source to client or to the original author?

This is quite good.

[ykhan]

Hi, Although I feel that this is really the best licensing method for Vicidial especially when I consider the illegal practices some consultants are using for sale of this great piece of software. I endorse it as well, but would only like to pose a small question, what can be done if people continue to disregard the License and sell this as their own product. I can't say much about other countries, but know for certain a number of "consultants" in some developing countries like Pakistan that have branded the product under thier name and continue to sell it as such. To really make a difference I feel that there should be real repercussions to violation of this license agreement for it to have a difference when its actual status is changed from GPL to AGPL. Just a thought.

[mflorell]

That is the problem with countries like Pakistan, it's not really that big of an issue for software like VICIDIAL since it is free it only really hurts the people buying it that don't know any better, it's not like we are losing money because they pass the software off as their own.

As for enforcing the license there, we would need a solid partner company in those countries to work on behalf of the project to make that happen.

[ykhan]

Hi Matt,

Although I am no longer residing in Pakistan, I would still like to help since this project has been the focal point of my consultancy services for more than two years. I recommend that you may contact Pakistan Software Export Board, PSEB (the Pakistan Government body administering such issues) to form a relationship to enforce the AGPL. A project within the PSEB is responsible for promotions of Open Source projects within Pakistan and should be able to provide real assistance in this regard.

www.pseb.org.pk
Phone: +92-51-111-333-666

I hope this proves to be helpful. If you need further assistance, please feel free to contact me. I would like to help in any way I can.


Regards

Yousaf

[mxconn]

Hi Matt,

I am running a call center in Pakistan and started using Vicidial few months back. I can provide you the help related to the vicidial licensing issues in Pakistan.

Let me know how can i be of any help to you and i fully support you and your stance of using AGPL License.

Regards

Sajid Zaman
Chief Technical Officer
MxConn (Pvt) Ltd.

MxConn is a registered call center and an IT Firm by Pakistan Software Export Board.

[cristian]

Not that I have a say, but I disagree. (Though I thank you for not going v3)

This creates forks and simply moves 'aftermarket' development modular.
Every seat in a callcenter must now be involved in licensing. *Sigh* This will make life difficult for the pirates, but difficult for me too.

[mflorell]

There really aren't any licensing issues unless all of these points are met:
- you are hosting VICIDIAL as an ASP service
- there are companies other than yours using this web-based service
- you have altered the code of the VICIDIAL codebase for this service

What this license change does is it protects the project from companies who want to take the VICIDIAL application, alter it, charge for usage of it and not allow anyone to have access to the source code changes.

[cristian]

ASP?

[cristian]

ASP = Application Service Provider.

The virtualization system I posted on earlier may be affected. Though I don't hide that the system is VICI, minor modifications were necessary.

These were not contributed as (I don't think) VICIgroup wishes to merge muti-tenant into SVN. I also fear it's not quite good enough.

[mflorell]

It doesn't really matter if we(VICIDIAL Group) don't want to include changes in the SVN codebase, they should be released or at least posted to the VICIDIAL issue tracker so that they are out there and available.

[cristian]

Agreed, will submit when I'm happier with it. It's not much, but it's enough.

If the license was "Submit all changes" I wouldn't have a problem, but it's not.

Would you mind granting us an exception or addend the license for modifications/features submitted to VICI?

**edited to remove attitude

[cristian]

The affero v2 license is based on GPLv3, not the v2 we know and love.
afferoDOTorg/agpl2.html

I feel that there are many serious issues with FSF activism in the newer GPL. I would like to ask that we have a real discussion about the effects.
lwnDOTnet/Articles/200422/

My initial assumption about this being agpl-3.0 was wrong, I will now RTFM.

[mflorell]

Have you actually read the LICENSE file included in the VICIDIAL codebase for 2.0.5 and SVN trunk?

There really was no published AGPLv2, it was created as a stepping stone to being accepted as GPL-compatible. AGPLv2 is nothing more than AGPLv1 with the GPL-compatible wording put into it after it was accepted. Then immediately after granting support for AGPLv2 they released AGPLv3 which is based upon GPLv3.

We chose AGPLv2 because we did not want to move to the GPLv3-based license. The LICENSE file included in the codebase will show you this.

[cristian]

From your LICENSE.TXT

This is version 2 of the Affero General Public License. It gives each licensee permission to distribute the Program or a work based on the Program (as defined in version 1 of the Affero GPL) under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or any later version.

From afferoDOTorg/oagpl.html

The GNU Affero General Public License version 3 has been released. It follows the same basic structure as this license, but it is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL, and you can combine modules released under GPLv3 and the GNU AGPLv3.

[mflorell]

Many apologies, you are correct. I just need to change that 3 to a 2. Under the license file terms as they are at this moment WE are bound by the AGPLv2 but any derivitive works would be bound under AGPLv3 which is not what we intended, and it is not how the GPL operates. Derivitive works SHOULD be able to follow the SAME license as the original so we will change this right now.

Thanks for catching that.

[cristian]

Why not AGPLv1? Its is an OSS approved GPLv2 based license.

I appreciate the gratitude. Thanks for the Matt, Matt.

[mflorell]

Because AGPLv1 is not GPL-compatible.

[cristian]

Sorry about the edit above, right you are.

Exception or addendum the license for modifications/features submitted to VICI?

[mflorell]

I'm not exactly sure what it is that you are looking for, could you explain in more detail?

[cristian]

Though I have no problem contributing changes via MANTIS or similar, I don't want to be responsible for distributing source. This means I am required to fork your codebase. Then you, your support staff and the forum members have to say "Where did you get VICI" and "What the hell is that" 40 times a day. I also don't want do have to ID myself on my installs or release all the sweet ASCII pr0n that I embed in comments.

In short, I prefer that VICIgroup maintains VICI.

[mflorell]

You are not REQUIRED to fork the ENTIRE codebase, all you have to do is maintain patch files against a specific version of the VICIDIAL codebase and point to the VICIDIAL code that you have altered, and you only have to do that if you are transferring use of VICIDIAL to people outside of your company.

I have seen companies that maintain GPL-type compatibility in this way, especially when their changes are very small in comparison to the total codebase.

[cristian]

Let me know when you commit the LICENSE.TXT changes so I know what I'm talking about.

[mflorell]

changes committed to SVN. I will be releasing 2.0.5rc5 with that and a few other bug fixes shortly.