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275 points pabs3 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.204s | source
1. thayne ◴[] No.45153844[source]
I feel like the SSPL is almost a good open source license. I think there is a place for something a little stronger than the AGPL that is copyleft on necessary components even if they aren't directly linked. But it has a couple of major failings:

1. It's too vague about what is covered by it. This makes using such software risky in practice. Is the OS it runs on included? What about a log aggregator used to collect logs? Or a system backup system? The VM hypervisor and orchestration software for running the VMs that host it? I think it would be better if it was more clearly scoped to components that are specifically related to the service itself and not general purpose components of the hosting environment and/or things that could easily be substituted with other standard open source or off the shelf components.

2. It isn't compatible with AGPL or GPL. This is especially bad combined with 1. Does that mean you can't run the service on Linux? I don't think it could be compatible with AGPL code directly linked to it, but it could allow external components to be under most open source licenses.

IANAL, and don't know exactly how to word a license that fixed those issues, but I think there could be something better than the SSPL, and maybe such a license has a better chance of getting OSI approval.