> 73 [...] Here we are particularly concerned about the practice of program authors who purport to license their works under the GPL with an additional requirement that contradicts the terms of the GPL, such as a prohibition on commercial use. Such terms can make the program non-free, and thus contradict the basic purpose of the GNU GPL; but even when the conditions are not fundamentally unethical, adding them in this way invariably makes the rights and obligations of licensees uncertain.

It still doesn't sit right with me. Like the program authors should be allowed to license things however they want. A clause to contradict the program authors so as to not have them contradict the GPL is kind of strange to me.

I get the possibly "false advertisement" angle, like hey we're AGPL "caugh but not really". As a scheme to fool users into thinking they can use it freely. But still, I feel that be better to be on a user to read the additional terms and decide for themselves.

At least the court recognized you can't call a modified AGPL free and open source, so I guess the court established that and now this clause is no longer needed on the AGPL maybe?

The way I see the FSF is that they try to create a system where everyone's freedom to change and share between other people is maximized.

To be able to meet this goal we need some rules, like not being able to change software and share as closed source.

We don't want near absolute freedom like the MIT license. For the same reason we don't want to live in a country without any rules.

So this clause aligns perfectly with how I view GPL, maximizing people's freedom to modify and share the software.

The coercive behavior the FSF promulgates represents a narrow and openly ideological view of "freedom".

Thankfully, there are other ways to share open-source software, ones that don't restrict options or create burdensome obligations for users & contributors.

Openly ideological is better than nakedly profit-seeking, which is mostly all the open source community offers.

What "burdensome obligations" does the GPLv3 impose on each group? I'm especially keen to know what restrictions the GPL poses for users.

I personally consider being forced to open-source derivitive software (or software that merely uses it) to be burdensome enough not to use GPL projects.

Yes, all software licenses impose restrictions.

The GPL's restrictions ensure that the end user maintains their freedom, at the expense of developer freedom to choose their own, more restrictive (to the end user but also potentially to other developers) license, if they want to incorporate the Free Software into their own software.

That is a tradeoff I'm cool with. I'm always a fan of ensuring end user freedom, including the right to repair.

I will also note that the GPL is explicitly not an end-user license. You can do whatever you want with it yourself. It only covers distribution.

> Like the program authors should be allowed to license things however they want.

There’s nothing to stop them coming up with their own license (like MongoDB did). They don’t have to plagiarise the GPL.

MongoDB's Server Side Public License is a derivative of the AGPL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License

> The Server Side Public License (SSPL) is a very strong copyleft source-available software license introduced by MongoDB Inc. in 2018. It is a modified version of the GNU Affero General Public License version 3.

Wow who would trust a license that is so clearly violating its own license.

Hilariously they provide a diff showing them stripping the copyright https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compare...

Elsewhere in this thread it was mentioned that the FSF FAQ allows derivative licenses, as long as they have different names.

Yes, they must have been granted another license to copy the license. Presumably this asked them to also remove attribution to avoid confusion.

The license grant is in the FAQ. If it comes down to a legal fight the FAQ is usable in court.