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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
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  • Modifying CiviCRM and complying with the AGPL
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Author Topic: Modifying CiviCRM and complying with the AGPL  (Read 740 times)

jepler

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Modifying CiviCRM and complying with the AGPL
March 03, 2012, 01:58:09 pm
Does anyone have a modification to CiviCRM that will allow me to comply with the AGPL license?

Specifically, something that makes the "Download source" link actually give the user a copy of the running source, as required by the AGPL?

I'm willing to concede the argument that linking to the civicrm.org download page satisfies the requirements of the AGPL for sites that have not modified any portion of CiviCRM, but as soon as I make any modification to the source code there's no way I can see to argue that I'm complying with the license.

This puts me in a bad position, because I feel I cannot improve CiviCRM—not even, for instance, to apply an urgent fix for a security problem in the software—without first implementing a proper AGPL-compliant "download source" link.

PS I'm looking at the wordpress edition of CiviCRM 4.1.1

Donald Lobo

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Re: Modifying CiviCRM and complying with the AGPL
March 03, 2012, 03:05:55 pm

a few thoughts and comments:

1. With regard to security and/or other patches, you can file an issue on the CiviCRM wiki and attach the patch to the issue. That way you are sharing your changes with the community.

2. If you are making lots of changes, you can potentially just point to your "public version control url"(github / google code etc) and that should meet the AGPL requirements

3. I think most orgs (mainly 3rd party) who go after GPL/AGPL violators are after folks who intentionally are making it closed source. If you are sharing your changes with the community, i suspect an explanation of how you are doing it will suffice, and they'll probably advice you on how to improve on it. On the other hand, IANAL (i am not a lawyer)

4. If your argument is skewing towards, you should use a different license than the AGPL, then thats a different discussion:)

lobo

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jepler

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Re: Modifying CiviCRM and complying with the AGPL
March 03, 2012, 06:44:26 pm
I'm really not trying to start a backdoor argument about the appropriate choice of license for your project.

I understand that I would probably "get away with" making inconsequential changes to CiviCRM and not following the letter of the AGPL.  But I would prefer to actually comply with the software's license.

I understand that public code hosting exists on the internet and may be an alternate type of answer to this problem (though there will be some preparatory steps needed, because for instance the software needs to be able to identify what git commit id it is currently running, so that it can link to the correct Corresponding Source)

I'm just wishing for a feature where CiviCRM would prepare a .zip of a bunch of .php files on demand, so that I am assured that at every moment I am complying with the terms of the AGPL.
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