recently we, your mostly friendly Ftpmaster and -team, have been asked about an opinion about the AGPL in Debian. The short summary is: We think that works licensed under the AGPL can go into main. (Provided they don't have any other problems).

Version 0.0.3 has now been released, another snapshot of semi-stable code. The biggest change this time, is the migration to YUI (Yahoo User Interface) AJAX widgets.

"Free software is a good thing, its empowering, I might even go as far as to say its the way things should be done. One of the biggest threats to free software at the moment is “web services”, or if you’re an airy fairy Web 2.0 person “The Cloud” (airy could, geddit?).

"There are many services that will host your project's source code, mailing lists and bug trackers. While very few of these services charge for their services, most of them are built on proprietary software. Worse, some of them have started adding adverts for proprietary software in their mailing lists, or refusing projects with certain free software licenses [...] So, what's the alternative?

"...The current generation of network services or Software as a Service can provide advantages over traditional, locally installed software in ease of deployment, collaboration, and data aggregation. Many users have begun to rely on such services in preference to software provisioned by themselves or their organizations.

"A company called Control Yourself, led by Evan Prodromou (who serves with me and many others on the FSF-endorsed Freedom for Network Services Committee) yesterday launched a site called identi.ca. It's a microblogging service similar to Twitter, but it is designed to respect the rights and freedoms of its users..." -- http://identi.ca/doc/source

After 18 months of widespread consultation with community and corporate interests, the third versions of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) were released one year ago on 29 June 2007. In November, they were joined by the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).

"This is a post about freedom. The freedom to keep your data for yourself and the freedom to run free software. You should be able to reclaim and enjoy these freedoms also when using web applications. [...] Let me be clear: web apps are great and I’m in love with them. But I think it’s time to ask for more freedom and more privacy. Here is a three step plan to achieve both these results..."