License: The Python's Tongue

Posted by Bjarni on July 2, 2015

It has been an interesting month!

I finally put the team's original plan into action, launching a vote on our new roadmap site, asking our community of backers to help us choose a single license for the project.

There were discussions on Twitter, thoughtful blog posts and insightful e-mails. And people voted.

Finally, while I was fast asleep my trusty robots disabled the voting and made a snapshot of the voting database at midnight California-time, July 1st. I got up the next morning and before making breakfast I ran a quick grep to get a hint of the results. I was not happy with what I saw.

Not happy at all...

Raw, Cooked and Baked Results

This is what I saw:

51.39% in 258 votes for the GNU AGPL v3

48.61% in 244 votes for the Apache License 2.0

So we have a winner! Sort of. Barely...

I mulled it over for most of the day and recalculated that evening, this time weighing each ballot by the USD amount donated by the voter, excluding the project founders because putting a dollar amount on our contributions is not trivial math. This balloting method led to Apache winning by a surprisingly large margin. However, when I dug into the results, it turns out the difference was down to a single four-figure backer who voted for Apache.

Reversing the results on the basis of one man's generosity would not seem right at all... particularly when I had just excluded the founding team (whose opinions I know quite well) and I know for a fact that very vocal advocates of the winning license backed us by just as much but neglected to cast their votes.

So I recalculated a third time, this time using the natural logarithm of USD amounts. This rewards generosity while recognizing that wealth is not evenly distributed. This time the AGPLv3 won again, albeit by an even smaller margin than before: 50.81% vs 49.19%

I gave up.

The Python's Tongue

On the surface of it, this is the worst possible outcome of our license elections.

The whole point of the vote was to reach a consensus. Licensing tends to be very divisive in the Free and Open Source Software community and the Mailpile Team hoped that by using a transparent, open and fair process we could reach a conclusion everyone could abide by.

Although these results clearly don't really meet that bar, all we can do is look for a silver lining.

The fact is, voter participation in this election was quite low. 3041 people in total were eligible for voting, but we only had about 16.5% turnout. Considering the subject matter (licensing, how dull!), it seems quite reasonable to assume this means most of our backers just don't care, one way or another. Even Stallman himself commented that both licenses were acceptable, although he of course prefers the AGPL.

With that interpretation, the results look like this:

8.5% in 258 votes for the GNU AGPL v3

8.0% in 244 votes for the Apache License 2.0

83.5% don't care enough to vote or were unaware of the elections

So our community is indeed divided. But it's not divided right down the middle, it's divided like a python's tongue. Mostly united in just wanting Mailpile to exist, with an small split at the tip regarding the license.

That's not too bad!

Choosing a License

So, what's next?

We could extend the deadline, hope more people vote and a stronger consensus emerges... but I don't really think that will work. The ratios haven't really changed much since the first few days of the campaign. I know, I've been peeking.

Since we really can't live with two licenses forever, a choice has to be made. I am writing the bulk of the code these days and have no-one but the community to answer to, so ultimately the decision sits with me. Without a clear mandate from the election, I am going to have to take responsibility and make the choice myself. People who don't like it will know exactly who to blame...

That's a scary thought, but what the heck.

I choose the GNU Affero General Public License. Version 3.

That will be the license I apply to all future code I commit to the Mailpile project and that is the license future contributors to the main repo will have to agree to as well.

Sorry Apache backers, I really hope we can still be friends! If you're really bummed you do have the right to fork yesterday's code and carry on without me. But I would much rather we worked together.

But... why?

I choose the AGPLv3, because I think it is the right license for this project.

Not because it won the elections by a tiny margin, although that was of course a factor. Not because my co-conspirators, Smári and Brennan, both prefer it, although that also matters. I choose the AGPLv3 because I think it fits.

Mailpile is a project about freedom. It is not a popularity contest or a startup, it's not "industry infrastructure", nor does it aim to be. Mailpile is a political project which aims to improve the privacy and digital independence of individuals everywhere.

The Apache License is a wonderful thing, an open, generous, pragmatic, apolitical license. The AGPLv3 on the other hand, is a political and ethical line in the sand.

And so is Mailpile.