Didn’t they switch to a license with stronger mechanisms to keep the source available? SSPL, is basically AGPL but have even stronger protection from large corperations to use the code in their data centers without contributing the changes back. This is basically a move to prevent AWS/Google/Microsoft/et al, from leaching on the contributors work without giving anything back.
Or am I reading this wrong?
EDIT: Note, that the Mastodon account is to an AWS employee… so for him, this might be bad, since it no longer allows them to have their own internal fork without contributing back. Now, they will need to use a real for and maintain that them selves without leaching on the redis contributors.
The restriction doesn’t only apply to large corporations, it applies to everybody. It restricts what you can do with it so it breaks the fundamental freedoms that make up “FOSS”. As an immediate result it will be removed from Fedora and Debian because they don’t consider SSPL/RSAL to be FOSS:
https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/497
it breaks the fundamental freedoms that make up “FOSS”
Why? All the license says is that if you provide it as a service you must release the source code.
It says that you must release all your source code, even the stuff that isn’t covered by the license. From Wikipedia:
anyone who offers the functionality of SSPL-licensed software to third-parties as a service must release the entirety of their source code, including all software, APIs, and other software that would be required for a user to run an instance of the service themselves,
Fedora and debian support the corporate definitions of FOSS, so their opinions do not matter here.
it applies to everybody
I don’t think most of us want to offer services by hosting a service without contributing back the code. If they do, I am happy that it is a requirement that they give back. Only for-profit companies will have an issue with this.
They could just use AGPL. Amazon would need to contribute back, but with no restrictions on who and how can run it. Current licence has a clause that prevents any providing of the software on the network.
Does that prevent my managed Mastodon instance host from providing Redis over the network to my Mastodon, or does that count as them providing Redis to themselves and then providing Mastodon to me?
The wording says “third-parties as a service”, so as long as Redis isn’t accessible by people outside your organization, it’s fine. But paid Redis hosting wouldn’t be allowed on the new license.
Weirdly OSI doesn’t classify the SSPL as an open-source license because it doesn’t guarantee “the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor”, calling it a fauxpen license. I don’t think the FSF has commented on the license, though I would be curious what they say about it.
I imagine they consider it to not give the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor, because providing the source of the entire stack needed to run the service you provide makes it impossible for users to host their service on stuff like AWS, since it is proprietary.
