Posted by sdondley on August 2, 2008 at 4:07pm
So we aren't supposed to put in a LICENSE.txt file which is not automatically generated for us. So my question is, where are we supposed to indicate that you wish your module to be release under affero gpl 3?
Comments
You don't
If you are submitting a module to Drupal's CVS repository, you don't. Our CVS policy requires all code to be under the same license as Drupal: GPLv2+. That is to avoid having some modules under GPLv2-only and others under AGPLv3, which would then not be compatible and could not be distributed together. To avoid that sort of confusion, we permit one and only one license for anything in CVS, GPLv2+.
If you are unable or unwilling to release your module under that license, you may not check it into CVS. By checking it into CVS, you agree to release it under that license. If we find modules or themes that claim to be under some other license, they will be removed.
Alright, so how do I
Alright, so how do I properly distribute AGPL v3 code? Do I set up a drupal site with my modules and put a link on the site saying "click here to download the code for this site?"
AGPL doesn't handle modules well
There are some edge cases with mixing AGPL and GPL code that we're still trying to work through with our lawyer. The AGPL is not really designed to handle modular systems well. We'll update the FAQ when we have more information.
For the moment, if you are writing your own module I highly recommend using the GPL, not the AGPL. It's simpler and you can use the Drupal.org infrastructure.
If for some reason you have to use AGPL, I suggest offering a download of your module from your site and providing a link to the Drupal.org download page next to it. I believe that will suffice for the requirements of the AGPL, or at minimum qualify as acting in good faith to do so.
Following your advice in the
Following your advice in the last paragraph, the software they downloaded would be under gplv2, so they would not be obligated to keep any links in the module to download the code.
There is nothing requiring me to release under affero. But it would be nice if users who built upon my code would have to share any improvements.
Let me ask the question more directly
So it seems like I can take a copy of Drupal and release it under AGPL v3 along with my modules, is this right? Other people could continue to use the GPL v2 copy from d.o., right?
gplv2 or later...
First, it's gplv2 or later.
Beyond that, I think it's reasonable to have a GPL2 or later from drupal.org and separately from d.o you can state that your module is also available under AGPL3.
In general, though, you can't have a project page on d.o and only host the code elsewhere - from http://drupal.org/node/7765:
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Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
But it seems kind of weird
But it seems kind of weird to have two different licenses for the same software. Seems to me like there's no way to really offer a drupal module under agplv3 and enjoy the benefit of putting it up as a project on d.o. If I put an affero version on my own site and a gpl2 on d.o., the developer who did not want to use the affero license would simply use the version from d.o. which kind of defeats the purpose of releasing under affero.
"weird" ?
Well, Mozilla releases their code under 3 licenses. jQuery is under MIT and GPL licenses. I don't think it's very "weird" to do it.
It's certainly true that this is a case where the Drupal project limits the decisions that module contributers can make. See http://drupal.org/node/66113 for more details on why.
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Affero is a bad fit anyway
The AGPL was written more for stand-alone apps. It doesn't conceptually fit with the plugin-based architecture used by Drupal and similar module-based systems. That's why I'd frankly discourage its use for Drupal anyway. It's more intended for things like Squirrelmail, RoundCube, PHPMyAdmin, etc.
While I certainly appreciate your desire to apply as strong a copyleft as possible to your code, I think in this case it is not necessary. Drupal developers in my experience tend to be very friendly toward sharing their modifications back if at all possible, so the extra download requirement of the AGPL is unnecessary. Even with that requirement, too, you wouldn't directly gain much from it. The AGPL requires that visitors to the site get access to the code if such is already possible. It does not require that the site author send code back to you, the original developer. You'd still have to go track it down from them yourself anyway.