Re: [libreplanet-discuss] RollApp: proof that we need to deprecate GPL for AGPL for everything

[Aaron Wolf]

On 09/14/2015 07:49 AM, John Sullivan wrote:
> Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> writes:
> 
>> https://www.rollapp.com/ — complete SaaSS to the extreme (see
>> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html ).
>>
>> They aren't illegal, and they do mention "Open Source" at least (which
>> isn't absolutely legally required), but they avoid even linking to the
>> websites of the software they host.
>>
> 
> "avoid" seems to assume bad faith. Separate from the licensing strategy
> question, has anyone written to them to ask them to add links to the
> projects? They aren't exactly going out of their way to hide it -- they
> call things by their common names, like Inkscape and GIMP.
> 
> -john
> 

Thanks John, I agree. I am guilty of some assumptions of bad faith.
After all, they are a VC-backed for-profit company and the whole site
fails to even mention GNU/Linux. But I should practice the assumption of
good faith, I suppose.

On the positive side, they linked on their blog to Krita's fund drive.
They do generally link on their blog to outside articles and references
to the software.

I did write to them about their erroneous listing of Sublime Text as
"Open Source" which they promptly fixed.

Perhaps someone else, or several others, could write to them encouraging
them to do things that would be at least a good direction. Ideally, they
would link to the projects' sites and be transparent that these programs
all run on GNU/Linux systems, *ideally* making it clear that people can
run them on their own GNU/Linux systems (although that wouldn't provide
access to a tablet unless a screen-sharing setup were done). I do
suspect that they are avoiding giving people information about how to
skip their services. But it would be better if we can nudge them to improve…

-- 
Aaron Wolf
co-founder, Snowdrift.coop
music teacher, wolftune.com