Hey, I’m Adam, and I’m building Tapir (https://tapir.social), a single-user multi-protocol Fediverse server in Deno.
I’ve been posting about ActivityPub and Fediverse software for a while, but this is my first time posting on this Discourse. Looking forward to building the Fediverse with all of you!
I had no idea you weren’t here already Adam, otherwise I would have urged you to board this train a while back!
Yes, I second Arnold’s welcome extended to you and you’re already doing great things and let’s get a thread for your FEP going here too 
Kindest regards,
Bradley.
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The Proxy Objects FEP is still marked WIP. As soon as that label is removed it can be merged and a tracking issue + discussion topic created.
I’ll just remove the WIP label then, I assumed a lot of the discussion had to happen on the issue first. The open discussions on the merge request can be moved to an issue/discussion.
No, it is mostly used for a quick check. After that the FEP is in Draft status for a year (or less, if a request is made to finalize it) and feedback from the community should be reflected in PR’s that update it.
Welcome @arnelson!
Can you explain your choice of a license?
I would certainly recommend one that is both free/libre in FSF sense and OSI-approved.
This is the second time I’ve gotten a question like this, so maybe I need to reconsider it.
The Blue Oak license is basically an MIT license. It should work the same as any permissive license, like MIT or BSD. A few years ago there was an article going around Reddit and HN discussing this license and how it’s an improvement over MIT/BSD, particularly in terms of clear language, including additional contributors in the license, and covering patents.
This convinced me to use Blue Oak (though maybe it’s just my tendency to use new shiny things). I use it on most of my GitHub projects, but usually there’s a disclaimer in the README explaining what it is; I don’t have that on Tapir yet.
But it seems like Blue Oak never caught on, I’ve never encountered anyone else using it, and it just breeds confusion. Maybe it would be better to switch to the Apache license, which is permissive and provides the same guarantees.
As far as why I use a permissive license instead of a copyleft license… that’s a deliberate choice and a feature of Tapir. Almost all ActivityPub software is AGPL. AGPL scares businesses away from using software. I know that a lot of people consider that a feature, but, in my opinion, if we want the Fediverse to replace commercial social media, it needs to be practical for businesses to run their own instances too. I don’t think Tapir itself is an ideal platform for that, but it’s also a collection of Typescript libraries that can be reused in other projects, and I want that reuse to be as easy and unencumbered as possible.
He he, the other person was me 
There are only a few other fedi apps that chose non-open-source licenses on their source-available codebase. (And there are an increasing amount of proprietary products, mostly on fedi client side). Most notable in here is Bookwyrm which comes with an anti-capitalist license.
I disagree on two accounts: first, I posted this about permissive vs. restrictive licenses:
Yes, here “permissive” means “submissive to market appropriation”. Choosing a so-called permissive license is allowing corporations to restrict further cooperation : granting people the right to restrict your freedom is not permissive, it’s masochistic.
On the other hand so-called “restrictive” licenses only restrict other people from restricting your freedom.
We should revolt against the inversion of meaning so prominent in contemporary propaganda. Orwell warned us.
My second point of disagreement is on the AGPL license. Businesses who are afraid of the AGPL are actually afraid of competition, and moreover scared of cooperation. Actually, as this article mentions:
The point, that most people miss, is that, the AGPL is just a super-set of the GPL, which terms distribution to also be network distribution, and nothing more!
Redaktor has plenty of MIT-licensed reusable Typescript.
That was a good read.
Luke Smith put it more expressively, IMO, with particular noteworthyness in a ubiquitous real world example that that MINIX is actually the most predominant desktop/laptop, and server platform OS in the planet.
Try to do a good thing by using a permissive license and have your work squandered
Also, the AGPL isn’t something that commercial operations are afraid of. There are plenty of examples of industry using AGPL software.
The problem (problems, in reality, are actually just opportunities for solutions) is that scheming “software and appliance” companies wish to close source their products (whether they created them or not) under their proprietary brands. They can, and have, launched litigation against those infringing upon or co-opting their trade and service marks, even patents based on their own products - that sometimes was developed and sold without a single scrap of code authored by them. The only thing a permissive license requires is a Copyright notice, somewhere obscure.
“Ohh yeah, we did include a bit of some open source code” is all they gotta admit to when pressed - they never can be forced to divulge that they didn’t write diddly squat!
Maybe… Just maybe… It’s… Your code.
With respect to the patent, all they need to do is change one little thing about the process in which the existing software worked and patent that. Whole 'nother thing though and I’m not here to teach how to engage in patent trolling, like we did at IBM, lolz.
When they do add to that code, their code is under a completely arbitrarily determined proprietary license, locking down the entire product (written by someone else), as closed source under the terms of a license they decide upon - nothing at all remains of the permissively licensed product… Except that obscure little Copyright notice somewhere.
AGPL merely enforces that anything you add to an initially AGPL licensed work must be made available on demand by the people using your product…
Why would anyone not want that with respect to the software they are trusting their finances, medical records, and privacy to?
I wanna know that the software I use has been vetted by potentially tens of thousands of people much smarter than I, who found nothing wrong with using it.
And that last tidbit, makes them unable to hide anything, so they don’t want to build their proprietary, closed source projects upon it, because they cannot obfuscate the fact that they made nothing at all.
It used to be that the so-called “corporate” software publishing special interests felt the same way about the GPL (they still do, actually), at the same time that Steve Balmer decreed that Linux is Satan, (well, cancer, at least - same difference):
Here’s the rub. FOSS doesn’t care, it has no feelings one way or the other. You use it as is, customize it to your liking, or use something else. It had nothing to gain or lose by you adopting it. So ultimately, it eventually prevails because those who are brave enough to give it away free AND INSURE THAT IT MUST BE MADE FREE TO OTHERS ultimately are the one’s who make it win over the closed source proprietary solutions.
Enterprises have no issues with AGPL’d software -they’re just using it to run their businesses. I’ve worked for a lot of Fortune 500’s and a couple of Fortune 100 companies, never once did anyone ever bat an eye when I selected GPL’d or AGPL’d software for the organization on the point of licensing. I did however receive a lot of blowback because of their low esteem related to supporting their own infra, which is why Debian was such a hard sell, but I could usually convince the choice of CentOS over that of RHEL if we at least had a few machines under a Redhat support agreement (and fur super mission critical stuff, i could usually get a free Slackware or OpenBSD boxes approved).
FOSS doesn’t care at all, but those with the fortitude and courage to Copyleft license their products (if their products are actually good) force the paradigmatic shift in first usage, and then opinion.
I always tell people, “Don’t be a pussy - they need it, therefore they have to use it, choose a license that truly benefits all of mankind.”
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A post was merged into an existing topic: Thats why I do want to have nothing to do with “management” here
I’ve lined up Tapir for inclusion on