I understand and I hope individual (independent) developers could shift to the AGPL in the next future. But what about mainstream projects? As long as they are developed by big firms’ employers how many chance to see them going AGPL? As you know over the year and a half public consultation process big firms were all agreeing on not closing the GPL loophole.

The only way to close the GPL loophole was to fix it within the GPL, when Richard’s power was absolute.

I agree we might not see anything major from Google go GPLv3 or AGPLv3 anytime soon. However, Google certainly develops a lot of different software for a lot of different stuff. There will be ample opportunity for such a move if the company so chooses.

It will be interesting to see what players such as Google do in regards to AGPLv3, particularly if and when we see some of the key development and distribution advantages cited by Funambol.

In terms of Android and the OEM groups, I would also agree that fragmentation is among the most applicable words. However, as in the case of Linux, GPL licensing has proven to be an effective way to help overcome fragmentation and achieve true collaboration.

JL

it would be a mistake to Open Source your business differentiators, because then your competitor’s business might use them to become as desirable to the customer as your own business.

Of course they might want to share some non-differentiating software, as they are actually doing now, but they don’t need the AGPL for this. On the contrary going AGPL would require the adoption od software architectures API-based in order to avoid the risk of being obliged to make public differentiating software.

Android it’s a different story. GPL was the right way to go, no doubt. But what about going to ask OEMs to join the club saying them that they would have got less (commercial) freedom than with windows mobile? I understand it wasn’t easy at all, but shall this technological club stay united? Fragmentation seems to be a keyword when talking about mobile..