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Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

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Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#451

Post by lmm »

sneak wrote: post #324
pritambaral wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom includes freedom to have privacy. You have that. The AGPL provides rights to _users_ of your software; that's it, no one else. If _you don't provide_ the modified software to someone, they can't demand your private patches. No one can "bring down the machinery of state copyright enforcement" against you, unless you interact with them first and provide them your modified software and they use it. And even wh…

Yeah, and running a business on my own computer by providing API services to someone is not distribution of software. Running an API business shouldn't force me to distribute anything to anyone.

What's the difference to the user? Any kind of selling software is "providing API services", if I'm invoking an API over the network then I'd like access to the source that's behind that API for the same reasons (fixing bugs, making improvements) that I'd like access to the source for an API I'm invoking on my local machine.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#452

Post by hnick »

lmm wrote: post #445
hnick wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it also depend to some degree on how much code sits between the user and AGPL code? IIRC AGPL was created to bypass a thin wrapper frontend type situation. I make a website that takes PDFs, it lets users extract pages. In the backend I'm just running a modified Ghostscript command line and sending back what it makes. From my discussions with other people, this type of direct coupling automation is what is int…

It depends on whether a court considers it to legally be a derivative work or not. Some (but not all) circuits apply the "Abstraction, Filtration, Comparison Test", under which thin wrappers should make no difference. Other courts might have their own ways of deciding. The whole area is murky and untested, mainly because companies haven't really hammered out the cases in court.

How is the court venue decided? Is it based on where the copyright holder is based? That just adds a whole other layer of murky, now I can decide whether or not to infringe based on where the project is headquartered :)

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#453

Post by varajelle »

jrv wrote: post #158

What I don't like about changes like this is that it makes it impossible to reuse any Grafana/Loki/Tempo pieces or libraries in any more permissively-licensed code without forcing that whole project into the AGPL as well. That doesn't only hinder competitors (which seems to be the legitimate goal), but also hinders interoperability and an open ecosystem evolving where people freely exchange bits and pieces of code to…

>™it makes it impossible to reuse any Grafana/Loki/Tempo pieces or libraries in any more permissively-licensed code without forcing that whole project into the AGPL as well.

While the whole project must be available under the AGPL, nothing prevent individual pieces to be under a more permissive but compatible license.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#455

Post by lmm »

rocqua wrote: post #422
josephcsible wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the ideal end-state from a software freedom perspective is that all software becomes AGPL. This change is a step in that direction, not only with the directly affected products, but for the reasons you mentioned, an additional pressure for more things to switch to it. Do you not like that end goal, or do you just think the side effects of the change outweigh the benefits of getting closer to it?

Wasn't the end goal of copyleft that all software becomes GPL 3 a few years ago? When will this stop? Why does 'freedom' in the Gnu sense require coercing all developers to use the same license?

> Wasn't the end goal of copyleft that all software becomes GPL 3 a few years ago?

Giving users access to software without distributing it to them is a recent technical innovation. The AGPL exists to give those users the same rights as more conventional software users. The underlying goal - ensuring that all users have the four freedoms - remains the same.

> Why does 'freedom' in the Gnu sense require coercing all developers to use the same license?

The copyleft trick only works that way. The goal is to ensure that all software users have the four freedoms; ideally they would be enshrined into law somehow, but failing that, a license is the best we can do.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#456

Post by pabs3 »

rasz wrote: post #76
tamalsaha001 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not seem to be the case. From [1] The difference between the AGPL and traditional GPL is simple: The AGPL seeks to close a "loophole" that allows a company or organization to modify GPL'ed software and use it to provide a service — but without actually distributing changes. So a company can take a package like, say, WordPress and modify the software significantly to sell a service — but hold back changes be…

Wasnt this solved with GPLv3 anti tivoization rules?

Related note: the GPLv2 also requires users to be able to reinstall the software:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#457

Post by lmm »

ec109685 wrote: post #406
sideeffffect wrote: post #204

If I contribute a code under the new CLA, is Grafana Labs allowed to relicense that contribution under a non-copyleft license, like Apache Public License 2.0, without my further permission? If yes, than it's a really bad bad thing and I hope they change it. CLAs that permit relicensing for a project that already uses permissive license is fine and fair. But doing that on a project with a copyleft license is a bad tas…

Don’t they have a license to your work and they can do however they please with it? E.g. sell it to X and Y for whatever they want and X and Y have no obligations to ever release anything back?

Not necessarily. They have whatever rights the terms of the CLA say they have.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#458

Post by pabs3 »

zokier wrote: post #244
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #185

When we released our server product under GNU AGPL v3 license, we have received a rather negative reaction from other participants in our field. The general sentiment was, "this license makes a useless curiosity". I wonder where does this hostility come from. Jealosy? FUD? Frustration that they can't take the source and not share own improvements??

The problem I have with AGPL is that you need to think about it, even if you just run the software and are not distributing it. Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. This is in stark contrast to all other mainstream licenses where in general you don't need to think about the license at all if you are not distributing the software, which makes very worry free experience.

The source distribution requirement only kicks in if you modify the AGPLed software.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#459

Post by [deleted] »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24
asim wrote: post #3

All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. This is not some nefarious plan to screw over the community. It's a very measured and thoughtful way to ensure the long term progress and continuity of these projects. If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these proj…

> Hopefully over time rather than having everyone choose their own licenses we end up with some form of standardisation. Yes; if you're going to do this, then using AGPL is so much better than flavor-of-the-week license. > If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these projects would slowly rot. It sounds like you're suggesting that anything but hard-copyleft is doomed to d…

[deleted]

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#460

Post by lmm »

lovasoa wrote: post #106
nopzor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope, that wouldn't be a modification to the AGPL-licensed grafana. you are free to do that. plus, dashboards and configuration are inherently ("source available"), so even if one were to consider them to be modifications (which they're not), you are already distributing them in source form ;-) [note: am co-founder/ceo of grafana labs]

The AGPL license states > A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compi…

If you're just exposing your grafana instance, no - and probably not if you're iframing them or similar. If you're actually embedding grafana into your program then yes, but that would be a strange way to structure a system.
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