Licence controversies: Elastic Search and Audacity While we might have spent a lot of 2021 not doing much it's certainly been an exciting time for software licensing. Recently some big Free and Open Source projects have made licensing and related changes that could affect their communities for a long time to come and we're going to be talking about them this month at Free Software Melbourne.
After being acquired by Muse Group the GPL2-licensed Audacity has added a controversial Contributor License Agreement, introduced controversial features and made controversial changes to their privacy agreement. There is also some uncertainty about whether GPLv3 will be the next licence for Audacity. Another well known (formerly Free and Open Source) project Elastic Search has recently adopted the SSPL which, while based on the GPLv3, is not recognised by the OSI or the FSF as a Free and Open licence. Would the AGPL have been a better solution, or is this an indicator of SSPLs success? We'll present the news and reports about these issues, explore what impact this might have on us and look at alternatives and forks that are currently available. We will also have a discussion about what this means for these projects and their communities. This will be a non technical event and all are welcome to join in the conversation or just listen in. We look forward to seeing you all online! Details Thursday, 19th August 2021, 7:30pm-9:00pm Join us at: https://meet.glasswings.com.au/b/fsm-iv6-tce-vpu Meeting Tips * Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. * Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au https://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
