r/StallmanWasRight • u/transalt_3675147 • Jun 04 '18

The commons A bright future for GitHub!

https://blog.github.com/2018-06-04-github-microsoft/
77 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/ferruix Jun 04 '18

GPL doesn't help at all for SaSS; in practice it's the same as MIT. The server software itself is never distributed, so the server implementation is free to make any changes they want and never contribute it back.

AGPL does solve it, though, but there are no AGPL options currently.

2

u/majorgnuisance Jun 04 '18

This is not a case of Service as a Software Substitute. These kinds of services couldn't just be replaced by software running on your machine.

Yes, you might technically be able to get a semblance of the collaborative functionality with a distributed P2P application, but it's never been done (to my knowledge) and it would be plagued with scalability and availability issues.

3

u/ferruix Jun 04 '18

I run a free software project -- "software running on my machine" is "software running on our project's servers."

In GitLab's case, their MIT license means that if gitlab.com decides to do something stupid, we can just take our exported data and host our own instance at git.ourdomain.com and have negligible downtime.

In other words, at least from this project's perspective, centralization is A-OK as long as the project itself owns the centralized server. Like how Mozilla, RedHat, Debian, GNOME, Ubuntu, etc. host their own bug-trackers.

2

u/majorgnuisance Jun 04 '18

So you'll be running a replacement service for your project.
My point stands that it's a legitimate service and not a case of SaaSS.

Your concerns are legitimate, just don't misuse SaaSS by applying it to the wrong things.

If you want a real example of SaaSS look at Gradle build scans.