Announcing Halo 2

Technology
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TGPPL says (emphasis mine):

  1. External Deployment. The term “External Deployment” means the use,
    distribution, or communication of the Original Work or Derivative Works
    in any way such that the Original Work or Derivative Works may be used by
    anyone other than You, whether those works are distributed or
    communicated to those persons or made available as an application
    intended for use over a network    . As an express condition for the grants
    of license hereunder, You must treat any External Deployment by You of
    the Original Work or a Derivative Work as a distribution under section
    1(c).

So, similarly to the Affero GPL, remote services such as websites and SaaS that are derivate works must publish their sourcecode within a year? (Note that some contend that even linking in the code, as a library, makes the whole application derivative work.)

A few questions:

  1. What is the rationale for this, especially in the present context? I observe that Affero GPL is far less popular then the GPLv3, which is identical other than not having such a provision.

  2. How does the above phrasing compare, in its implications (other than the 1 year grace period), to the analogous phrasing in the Affero GPL? To recall, the latter is:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software.

  1. How does this affect compatibility with other licenses? Recall that the Affero GPL would be incompatible even with its sister license, the GPL v3, if it weren’t for an explicit exemption in the former:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

and in the latter:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the special requirements of the GNU Affero General Public License, section 13, concerning interaction through a network will apply to the combination as such.

  1. More generally, what licenses are compatible with TGPPL?

    Ideology and abstract goals aside, this is a crucial practical question. We are very used to compromising and using open-source license that don’t perfectly match our tastes, because the alternative is a compatability nightmare or (more commonly) an adoption blocker that benefit no one. I’m not innocent, myself, of crafting custom licenses in the past; but in this day and age, I’ve come to view custom open-source licenses with much suspicion. They are more commonly the result of juvenile playfulness or idealism, than of well-reasoned problem-solving.

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