Flathub licensing

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2016-10-27 at 17:17 +0200, Joaquim Rocha wrote:
> Now that we're laying the groundwork for Flathub, we should decide
> which license we're using for it before we start coding.
> 
> Being a web project, my natural inclination would be to propose that
> we use AGPL [1] for it. However, people have expressed some concerns
> to me in the past about this license. E.g. I had a group management
> project many years ago that was licensed as AGPL v3. Since this
> project was particularly useful for companies, I received quite a
> number of emails from people saying that they wished to use it (or
> parts of it) but, even if they wanted to contribute important changes
> back, they were afraid of being sued over any tiny/unimportant
> changes they might end up doing.

The simple "fix" to that problem is development in the open (eg. at the
same level of openness as the front-end itself). An internal tool can
stay internal only, just like the source.

It's really no different from the GPL, except that you get to use it
even if it doesn't run on your machine.

> I believe Flathub, particularly the build management part, can be
> very attractive to companies as well, and I'd love them to use it and
> contribute to it in a fair way. So let's try to find out what license
> makes the most sense for this project with a healthy discussion.
> 
> [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html