The GNU Affero GPL (GAGPL) Version 3 and the companion Affero GPL version 2 licenses released last week provide for public access to source code (modified or not) running on a network server. The current GPLv3 license does not cover this specific scenario, hence the new license version.

To give an example, if you are browsing the latest hosted social media application and it displays the GAGPLv3 license, you should be able to locate and download the source code for the application you are using. You might have to pay a fee — remember the “free” in free software means freedom to copy, not the price — but you will have the source with the modifications to use as you see fit, subject to the other stipulations in the license. As developers adopt this license, will it cause web sites to rethink dependence on open source components?

Palle Pedersen’s blog post “Is AGPL (Affero GPL) the Doom of Google?” has a lengthy analysis of the issue. He notes:

A wide adoption of the AGPL would change a current standard practice for creating a web application, where the developers start with a few pieces of GPL software and then modify the software until it suits their needs. With AGPL software in the mix, a business decision would have to be made on whether to use AGPL software and make source code for modifications and additions available - or to avoid AGPL software and spend more time developing software which can be kept out of the hands of competitors and potential hackers.

Larger companies, e.g. Google and Yahoo, are actually among the best positioned to live in this new world. They can carefully evaluate the trade-offs on a case-by-case basis and can introduce processes to make sure that AGPL code does not sneak into places where it should not be.

It will be interesting to watch the rate at which this new license is adopted. One source for tracking open source license adoption rates is Black Duck Software’s Open Source License Resource Center. Read the Free Software Foundation’s announcement of the new license here.

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Having spent some days with Gartner and some 3′500 CIOs and IT decision makers at the Fall 2007 IT Symposium in Cannes it became obvious that open source has become „business as usual“ now in the enterprise. There was one session specifically focusing on Open Source but there were numerous sessions, specifically in the Web 2.0, portal, collaboration and social software domains that were covered extensively. And interestingly, if the analysts didn’t mention open source alternatives, the audience asked for them. Open source products mentioned often were Drupal, WordPress, Roller, SugarCRM, Alfresco as well as JBoss. One interesting comment from Andrea di Maio was that apparently US government organizations are more aggressively pushing for open source than their European counterparts.
Side note: Spending a few days in the warm and sunny South of France sounds like a nice side effect of joining a conference. but sadly enough, none of the conference rooms had windows. When I was telling this story coming back to the office, somebody asked: “So given they didn’t have Windows, they all were on Linux?”

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Congratulations to the Dojo Toolkit for releasing 1.0 this week.

As described in the SitePen Press Release:

Dojo provides easy-to-use, high-quality UI components and JavaScript infrastructure critical for building responsive web applications without the need for proprietary plugins or single-vendor solutions. Only 25K in size, the base of Dojo delivers key support for Ajax, progressive enhancement, animations, and opens the door to a wealth of high-quality widgets and extension modules. Dojo supports the Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera browsers.

Also shipping with Dojo core in 1.0 is the Dijit framework for widgets (including support for accessibility and internationalization of widgets, as well as programmatic widget creation), and the DojoX set of extensions (including CometD and Dojo Offline). Finally, the Dojo packaging system and D.O.H. unit testing harness demonstrate the maturity of the project from a development management / engineering perspective - it isn’t just about adding more features but making those features usable for development projects who adopt Dojo.

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They’re even talking about “participative communities” over in the .NET universe as the alt.net movement (insurgency?) gains momentum. Martin Fowler’s Bliki summarized the AltNetConf in Austin, TX a few weeks ago. He describes key participants as “a group of long-time users of Microsoft technologies who feel that their development philosophy has been getting out of sync with the perceived orthodoxy from Redmond.”

Highlighting their shared approach to software development methods (think agile), Fowler addresses a key topic — the relationship between software providers and software users:

“A participative community is different, they don’t just want the vendor to listen and provide suitable products - they want to participate in the development of new products. It’s just such a participative community that’s taken the initiative in the Java world. JUnit, IBatis, Spring, Hibernate et al didn’t come out of the vendors, but were developed by “customers”. One of the things about the nature of the software industry is that many customers are every bit as capable of producing vital products as vendor companies, especially when combined with the community and ethos of open source.

The great question ahead for Microsoft is how to engage with a participative and opinionated community like this. Treating such a group as an opponent will result in the loss of valuable products, and more importantly the capable people connected with them. Engaging with a community like this brings great opportunity. I would argue that the participative community around enterprise Java has saved the enterprise Java platform. A big challenge for Microsoft in all this is that this means finding a way to accommodate with open source development. …

One other issue in a community like this is that it’s a community that doesn’t equate criticism with animosity. Many vendors suffer from the belief that anyone who criticizes them is their enemy. In truth often your friends are at their most valuable when they are critical.”

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can be “open” enough to accommodate the alt.net movement. Given the caliber of the people involved, Microsoft’s loss would be open source’s gain.
 

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