In the last 28 years of publishing software, I’ve had three distinct eras of software licensing. All of my recent stuff is available under the European Union Public License 1.2, and I thought to explain why.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/35110129

This year I decided to switch my “default license” to EUPL-1.2. This is an OSI-approved free software license created and published by the European Union. And it is quite a divergence from the licenses I’ve used in the past. EUPL is a strong copyleft license that closes the “SaaS loophole” by requiring reciprocal licensing regardless of how the software is distributed.

Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along.

We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.

And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own.

  • talkingpumpkin@lemmy.world
    41·
    9 hours ago

    IIUC the EUPL is more similar to the GPL that the AGPL (ie. there’s no “network use” clause)

    edit: seems like IDUC - see comment below

    • mholiv@lemmy.world
      4·
      14 hours ago

      Not true. The EUPL defines distribution broadly enough that it covers saas style network use. It’s like the AGPL.

      From the article:

      And it is quite a divergence from the licenses I’ve used in the past. EUPL is a strong copyleft license that closes the “SaaS loophole” by requiring reciprocal licensing regardless of how the software is distributed.

      From the official source:

      For many open licences, distributing software is obtaining it (i.e. via downloading) in order to install it on your own device. Licences do not cover remote use, when a user interacts remotely with server-provided functionalities. The definitions in article 1 of the EUPL assimilates “communication to the public” to “distribution” and therefore targets and covers SaaS (software as a service) and the ASP (application service provider) activity.
      Article 1 defines as “- Distribution or Communication: any act of selling, giving, lending, renting, distributing, communicating, transmitting, or otherwise making available, on-line or off-line, copies of the Work or providing access to its essential functionalities at the disposal of any other natural or legal person.”.

      Therefore on this specific point, the EUPL is similar to the AGPL.

      Source: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/faqs