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EdX Source Code Released

code.edx.org

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Re: EdX Source Code Released

#11

Post by andyjpb »

belorn wrote: post #10
andyjpb wrote: post #9

It's great to see the edX release! Good work guys! However, it's AGPL (Affero GPL) which is really quite an onerous license. As far as I understand it AGPL requires you to release your changes at the time you make them rather than at the time you distribute the resulting software. This will have a big impact on how useful the codebase is to anyone else. It'll be interesting to see how and which communities develop ar…

That't a very stranger interpretation of the license. Here is the complete license text minus the GPLv3 itself (which explicitly do not include Remote Network Interaction): Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportuni…

Yes. that's right. It's "simple". that doesn't mean it's not onerous tho'. It means that every time you put something into production you are required to do all the additional work of formalizing your changes and making sure that they're available.

This significantly blurs the distinction between things that happen inside your organisation and things that happen at the interface of your organisation and the outside world, especially if your organisation is, say, a university and the people "inside" it are your students and you make your LMS based on this code available to them.

The ?GPL software that a universities IT department is currently running is unlikely to be subject to terms such as these and it will cost a lot to put these processes in place and to maintain them. Compared to the GPL, it's quite a hard license to comply with.

Re: EdX Source Code Released

#13

Post by belorn »

andyjpb wrote: post #11
belorn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That't a very stranger interpretation of the license. Here is the complete license text minus the GPLv3 itself (which explicitly do not include Remote Network Interaction): Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportuni…

Yes. that's right. It's "simple". that doesn't mean it's not onerous tho'. It means that every time you put something into production you are required to do all the additional work of formalizing your changes and making sure that they're available. This significantly blurs the distinction between things that happen inside your organisation and things that happen at the interface of your organisation and the outside w…

What exactly is the complaint. Is it that AGPL require source for web services while GPL do not, or is it that some development practice is to use production trees as the development tree?

Using a production tree as a development tree has many negative aspects. Student will see any compilation error, development bugs, spelling errors, Lorem Ipsum and other "inside" aspect of development. Having the actually code also available at that time might be inconvenient, but it is easily fixed. Don't develop on the production tree. First develop on a development tree and then once done, push to production.

However, if the complaint is that AGPL require that users get source code... well, that's kind of the point of AGPL. It is the singular reason why it was created. If an universities IT department do not want student to have access to the LMS source code, then they need to decide what they least want to do. Spend money on hireing a developer to produce a similar program, spend money on a proprietary program that may or may not do what they want (minus customization), or accept giving student source code so they might read, learn, and maybe even be artistic and improve on. Three things student are sadly rarely allowed to do in universities.

Re: EdX Source Code Released

#14

Post by [deleted] »

andyjpb wrote: post #9

It's great to see the edX release! Good work guys! However, it's AGPL (Affero GPL) which is really quite an onerous license. As far as I understand it AGPL requires you to release your changes at the time you make them rather than at the time you distribute the resulting software. This will have a big impact on how useful the codebase is to anyone else. It'll be interesting to see how and which communities develop ar…

[deleted]

Re: EdX Source Code Released

#15

Post by dlitz »

andyjpb wrote: post #11
belorn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That't a very stranger interpretation of the license. Here is the complete license text minus the GPLv3 itself (which explicitly do not include Remote Network Interaction): Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportuni…

Yes. that's right. It's "simple". that doesn't mean it's not onerous tho'. It means that every time you put something into production you are required to do all the additional work of formalizing your changes and making sure that they're available. This significantly blurs the distinction between things that happen inside your organisation and things that happen at the interface of your organisation and the outside w…

> Compared to the GPL, it's quite a hard license to comply with.

Really? I don't see it.

Compliance should be easy for any site where the source code already resides on the server (e.g. every Ruby on Rails, Node.js, or Python-based site). All you do is you provide an option to download the code that's running on the server. As long as you store secrets outside your source tree (e.g. put HMAC keys into /etc), this should be easy.

Re: EdX Source Code Released

#16

Post by cypherpnks »

andyjpb wrote: post #11
belorn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That't a very stranger interpretation of the license. Here is the complete license text minus the GPLv3 itself (which explicitly do not include Remote Network Interaction): Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportuni…

Yes. that's right. It's "simple". that doesn't mean it's not onerous tho'. It means that every time you put something into production you are required to do all the additional work of formalizing your changes and making sure that they're available. This significantly blurs the distinction between things that happen inside your organisation and things that happen at the interface of your organisation and the outside w…

Keep it in a public github repo. Voila! Instant compliance.

Re: EdX Source Code Released

#17

Post by reinholds »

One of the coolest things about edX courses, are the interactive tools such as genomics viewer (IGV), circuit builder, also AI auto-grader. Do you think such tools will also be built by the community to be used for building new courses? I guess edX universities would not release them as open-source, since it's one of their competitive advantages, they have also invested a lot of work there.
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