Heather Meeker

RedHat killed off CentOS in its previous form. RedHat also now has a written policy of terminating customers who exercise their GPL rights of republishing RHEL source code. That seems like subverting the GPL far worse than a CLA. If that's the best example here, then that already speaks volumes. Perhaps you can list some other examples of successful businesses who offer their core product under AGPL without a CLA? As far as I've ever seen, when AGPL software is built by a business, a CLA is used. To quote Heather Meeker: "In privately funded business, AGPL is almost always used as part of a dual licensing strategy [...] Vendors almost always use a contribution license (CLA) for contributions from the community." https://heathermeeker.com/2023/10/13/agpl-in-the-light-of-day/

Unfortunately, there's no single tome directly on point of these debates that I'm aware of. Some of these debates are very old, but some are also basically current events. I'd also be suspicious of any one point of view, including my own. As for blogs, I'd strongly recommend all the folks mentioned in the post, all of whom I link from my blogroll (https://writing.kemitchell.com/blogroll.html). Bradley Kuhn: http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/, but see also https://copyleft.org, to which he's contributed extensively Heather Meeker: https://heathermeeker.com/ Van Lindbergh: https://processmechanics.com/ My own: https://writing.kemitchell.com I think I remember correctly that Bradley and Van were generally against SSPL, while Heather and I were for it. But you should ask them, rather than take my word for it! For a more general reading list, see this one from Blue Oak Council: https://blueoakcouncil.org/lawyer-reading-list

There has already been one court decision that pushes against a blanket fair use protection for AI training: https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/2023/10/13/judge-bibas-issues-1st-… And I think there are dozens of unfinished AI copyright infringement lawsuits... with likely more to come, I speculate. https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/2023/12/27/master-list-of-lawsuits… https://heathermeeker.com/ai-copyright-et-al-litigation-scoreboard-sor…

The FSF has been (slowly) moving away from CLAs though [0] [0] https://heathermeeker.com/2021/06/01/fsf-drops-assignment-requirement-…

https://heathermeeker.com/2018/04/30/first-gpl-case-in-china-or-is-it/ As the link warns, this is a secondhand translation, and my summary is thirdhand. Do your own reading, especially in the original language, if able. The general point here is that the Chinese legal system declared that the GPL legalese is OK, but that judges have the power to evaluate it in context of the case and retain the authority to override the legalese when it results in inappropriate outcomes. In this specific ruling, the judges ruled that bundling ('aggregation') of GPLv3 and unlicensed code did not infect the unlicensed code with the GPLv3, resulting in a loss for the defendant. If Onyx is bundling GPLv3 code with non-GPLv3 code, based on this single case, they are not required to disclose the source of the non-GPLv3 code that is aggregated with the GPLv3 code. If they have also/instead modified GPLv3 code, then they would probably be required to publish the source for the works derived from GPLv3 code. The usual arguments here are that modifying a bundle of GPLv3 code to include non-GPLv3 code is itself a 'derivative work' of GPLv3 code, or that the GPLv3 specifies that such bundling shall result in the bundled code being forcibly licensed under GPLv3. The Chinese court apparently did not accept this line of reasoning. YMMV, IANYL

>You have no clue why someone is working more than 10 hours consecutively or more than 45 hours a week. I have quite a few mainland Chinese friends in tech (I used to work there), and most work extremely long hours not because they like it, but because management and company culture enforces it and they're powerless to change it. They can't even conduct collective action, as that's essentially illegal. Chinese courts have however recognised the GPL, so it's conceivable that a license like this could have a real effect. I'm also led to believe that many people in the western game industry don't like crunch time (sometimes 100hour+ weeks), but have no choice in the matter. Hence their frequent calls for unionisation, such as https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/86hac3/its_time_for_game_dev… If such a license became widely used and could be legally enforced, it could potentially contribute to better working conditions in the game industry. Moreover, note the words "request or schedule". Seems like it wouldn't apply to companies whose employees willingly work extra hours without this being implicitly requested or scheduled by the company. >but it's equally as ridiculous as a restriction forcing employees not to eat toast on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays. The difference is that it's not forcing anyone to do anything; nobody has to use software with this license, but if they choose to use the software they must accept the terms. >Edit: If the…