I think it isnt news that some companies are stealing work from this project in their censorship software, which is one of the reasons why this project was taken down before. Such companies can simply claim that they used source code files from this project as is, include a copy of MPL-2.0 license and a link to this project and get away with it even if any of them have business in western countries and get confronted about it, which isnt quite ideal to say the least.
And that's why I think maybe opengfw should switch to AGPLv3, since AGPLv3 will require them to disclose their source code in pretty much most scenerios where they used any code piece from this project.
This can be done in two ways:
a) Take advantage of the secondary license bridge for AGPLv3 in MPL-2.0, makw all new changes introduced in new files licensed in AGPLv3, and thus making the whole project combined licensed in AGPLv3. This is the easiest way to approach this but doesnt prevent censorship companies using MPL-2.0 licensed code
b) Do a relicense of opengfw into AGPLv3, this would require every contributor of this project to relicense their work in AGPLv3, code from those doesnt accept will have to be rewritten. This will make sure no such companies can use any code from newer versions
Neither of this would change the license of old versions and it's just something that happened. At least u can prevent it from becoming worse.
I know that current maintainers seem arent planned to do any updates to opengfw, but if the code is simply as is stored here then from time to time it'll lost it's value as a target dummy for software bypassing censorship barrier, and there are forks of opengfw stored in github before this reupload, so i guess u guys still would want to improve opengfw in the future.
Maybe this problem should be figured out asap before any real progress is made.
Again I'm not a lawyer so all above isnt legal advices, switch to AGPLv3 isnt necessarily the only move possible, but I think it at least sort of addressed the biggest concern here: Will the contribution to opengfw find it's way directly into censorship barriers.
Ik in the AI age such companies can probably feed the code into an llm and tell it to rewrite and use the results instead and it's not like anyone can do anything with it, but i still think there's difference between that and the contributions directly being imported into these censorship software.
I think it isnt news that some companies are stealing work from this project in their censorship software, which is one of the reasons why this project was taken down before. Such companies can simply claim that they used source code files from this project as is, include a copy of MPL-2.0 license and a link to this project and get away with it even if any of them have business in western countries and get confronted about it, which isnt quite ideal to say the least.
And that's why I think maybe opengfw should switch to AGPLv3, since AGPLv3 will require them to disclose their source code in pretty much most scenerios where they used any code piece from this project.
This can be done in two ways:
a) Take advantage of the secondary license bridge for AGPLv3 in MPL-2.0, makw all new changes introduced in new files licensed in AGPLv3, and thus making the whole project combined licensed in AGPLv3. This is the easiest way to approach this but doesnt prevent censorship companies using MPL-2.0 licensed code
b) Do a relicense of opengfw into AGPLv3, this would require every contributor of this project to relicense their work in AGPLv3, code from those doesnt accept will have to be rewritten. This will make sure no such companies can use any code from newer versions
Neither of this would change the license of old versions and it's just something that happened. At least u can prevent it from becoming worse.
I know that current maintainers seem arent planned to do any updates to opengfw, but if the code is simply as is stored here then from time to time it'll lost it's value as a target dummy for software bypassing censorship barrier, and there are forks of opengfw stored in github before this reupload, so i guess u guys still would want to improve opengfw in the future.
Maybe this problem should be figured out asap before any real progress is made.
Again I'm not a lawyer so all above isnt legal advices, switch to AGPLv3 isnt necessarily the only move possible, but I think it at least sort of addressed the biggest concern here: Will the contribution to opengfw find it's way directly into censorship barriers.
Ik in the AI age such companies can probably feed the code into an llm and tell it to rewrite and use the results instead and it's not like anyone can do anything with it, but i still think there's difference between that and the contributions directly being imported into these censorship software.