@sneak It's actually really pragmatic; this was a problem because the GPLv3 was incompatible with the GPLv2 without the 'or later' clause.

@kick GPL2 is more than free enough for any reasonable person

@sneak GPLv2 is too proprietizable, and incredibly ambiguous. GPLv3 closes many loopholes while making things clear. If GPLv4 ever happens, I imagine it will follow the same path. If you see proprietary software as evil, which is the correct view, then GNU software being released in the most freedom-promoting way (the most modern GPL) is good.

@kick i disagree. i think everything after gpl2 is just stallman's anticapitalistic bent, including and especially the AGPL. software freedom isn't communism and people are still entitled to keeping their own patches secret/private.

@sneak AGPL doesn't stop you from keeping patches private. It stops you from distributing proprietary software to users. The same with GPLv3. Saying that GPLv3 is anti-capitalist is insane.

@kick AGPL absolutely stops you from keeping patches private the moment you run /etc/init.d/apache start

@sneak Because you shouldn't subject people to proprietary software and black boxes of systems.

The AGPL is not anti-capitalist, and doesn't stop you from keeping patches private. It just stops you from hurting others with proprietary software. That's pretty simple. You can even sell the software! In no way at all is that anti-capitalist.

@kick can't subject anyone to anything; my webserver only responds to inbound requests, it does not support push. any interaction with my webserver happens because the client subjected themselves to it