>> The fear is that a company could be forced into open-sourcing software that was not intended to be open source.
> wikipedia says agpl was brought in 2002. so around 21 years of people using this license and no one knows clearly what it does?
The fear referenced here isn't about what the license does. The fear are the unknowns about how it will affect business operations in the future after building a business around a piece of code with that licensing obligation attached to it.
> you can use unmodified AGPL code alongside proprietary code, all you have to do is put the license file up there.
You cannot. AGPL only has one linking exception, and it is for code licensed with GPL.
I do, in fact, work at a tech company, and do, in fact, write a lot of code to do my job. However, it is not a software company, as it does not sell proprietary software directly.
> Rewriting perfectly working code is never valuable.
It might be far more valuable than the other option, i.e. releasing the proprietary software under a free software license. An AGPL licensing issue will only ever, in a worst case scenario, force you to choose one of those two options, no more.
> I think that the AGPL is a fine language in cases where the code being released is a complete system, that you want many people/organizations to use and improve it, but you don't want anyone cloning it as their own standalone product.
Yup. In the same way that you could have a license that requires people to publicly criticize <Politician> to use your software.
You'll get some. But most will just not agree to your terms.
> re: OSS licensing, we use GPL and have been very hesitant about using something like AGPL. I’ve personally seen developers not use projects only because they’re AGPL. Even GPL seems to scare some developers.
Do you think it is more likely to scare your potential paying customers, your potential contributors, or potential freeloaders?
I expect that is likely to scare people in this order:
1. Freeloaders
2. Contributors
3. Customers
If I have a Free Software project, I want to scare freeloaders while still welcoming potential customers and contributors. I know its a balancing act, but I like the AGPL.
> It didn't work. If it is available as open-source, they don't _need_ a different license.
Don't they? I'm surprised to hear that. I have sold a few proprietary versions of my AGPL codes (which were identical to the original one, but with the license stripped). Not enough to make a living, but I can buy some fancy bikes with the money.
In some cases, they even paid --separately-- for support and a few features of the software that were of particular interest to them. For some reason, many companies are extremely frightened of the AGPL, but a dual AGPL/commercial licensing seems to fit them very well. This is a nice model for free software distribution, but it only suits small projects that do not get external contributors.
> If the source code originally used AGPL, isn’t it still contractually obligated to ensure those rights to its users, including any new source code added to it?
This guy really has no idea how copyright and licensing work. The AGPL places no obligation on the one distributing the original source code, it only places obligations on those who want to use or re-distirbute the code. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this.
If you don't understand such a fundamental point about licensing, you really really shouldn't be making a fool of yourself speaking about it in public.
> I have always disliked the “GPL doesn’t prohibit commercial use” argument. You know well why it isn’t practical to use for commercial purposes. You basically make any project using it into an unlimited full featured free trial.
I don't get it. What would be so wrong about making your source code available to everyone (including your competitors)? Remember, if your source code is AGPL and someone uses it, their source code is also AGPL and they must make their changes available to their users.
If you deliver real value to your customers, the fact that your source code is publicly available should be a plus point for your customers.
> What makes the AGPL unattractive? I thought it was basically just the GPL with a limitation on using the software to provide a SaaS product. You don't even have to contribute unpublished changes, right?
The things AGPL adds to GPL don't just affect people trying to do a SaaS offering of the program. If you modify it and users interact with it over a computer network you have to make source for your modified version available to them.
For example suppose it was software to add online ordering to restaurants. A restaurant modifies its copy so that it can be given the recipes of the items they sell and the modified software uses that information to allow customers to easily exclude items they might be allergic to or that violate their religious or ethical eating rules.
If that restaurant wants to use that as a competitive advantage over other restaurants they aren't going to want to have to give away their modifications, so aren't going to want to use AGPL software. They'd probably be fine with GPL software.
> Main guy commiting 600k lines and the second most committed guy 450 lines.
> So yeah, it wouldn't take him a whole lot of time if he really wanted to change the license by removing all the others' commits and rewriting it by himself.
Good point. I may try to get involved in its development as well to spread that out a little more.
> Also, what does AGPL has anything to do with keeping the license open sourced?
The AGPL requires that any code linked to it also be distributed with an AGPL license (the difference from the GPL being that hosting over a network counts as distribution). Every part of the project is technically linked to itself so if someone makes a change, no one else can use that change in the project under a different license.
> That’s pretty easy, right? I’m positive that your business has to deal with much more onerous contracts than the AGPL.
You're missing the point. They aren't choosing between the AGPL and Oracle's EULA. They're choosing between the AGPL and other open source software licenses.
First, every time some AGPL code has to change, a business has to review the amount of work that will go to it (patch or rewrite and replace), review the patch including legal review, etc.
Secondy, this requirement resticts my freedom. If the same code is licensed under a permissive license, I wouldn't have to do anything. Once it's approved for internal use, the overhead of dealing with OSS is almost gone.
Regardless of Google's falsehoods, it's undeniable that a permissive license doesn't restrict my freedom. And that's it - I don't need more anti-AGPL propaganda to avoid its use. If I can use the MIT or Apache or BSD licensed code, I will. Even if it's slightly worse, I'll pick it over AGPL-licensed code because in the mid and long term it won't cost me as much.
> Google wants to be able to incorporate FOSS software into their products and sell it to users without the obligation to release their derivative works.
Who doesn't? Why should anyone bother furthering your AGPL agenda over own interests and the freedom offered by permissive open source licenses?
I can't believe this crap topic comes up every so often.
> I assume you haven't contributed a line of code to the project, so it's a bit presumptuous to knock it.
It's not that simple. Even if you're a company that wants to use the software and contribute changes upstream, it's still a dumb idea to use AGPL software.
Because of the loose definition of what constitutes a derived work, modifying AGPL software (even if you put those modifications upstream) means you might have to open source your entire software stack. The AGPL is not like the LGPL, it doesn't contain any exceptions for linking against it in an overall product. Unless you have clear service boundaries, you are creating a derived work every time you use AGPL software in a service.
In my company, our lawyers outright forbid the use of AGPL software altogether for this reason. Even software that's only used internally. As _delirium mentioned above[1], that's not entirely an unwanted thing from the licenser's perspective: they typically do this so you'll buy their commercial license. But don't assume the only people who don't like AGPL are non-contributing freeloaders.
We submit tons of stuff upstream on a regular basis at my company, but we simply can't do it with AGPL software. Seeing any reference at all that our company (which has some of the deepest pockets in the planet) uses AGPL software anywhere in its stack will open ourselves up to lawsuits immediately. So we just don't touch it, ever.
> The AGPL is still not restrictive enough because you can resell the software without contributing anything back if you don't modify it
Why would you want to restrict reselling? If you want free software then you’re going to have reselling. If you don’t want reselling, then don’t make your software free/open source.
I’m not sure why people are getting mixed up. Anyone can make proprietary software and restrict all they want. There’s tons of commercial software. But it doesn’t have the features of free/open source.
>>I just picked up the more restrictive license at the beginning - being a sole funder and not working on this full time etc. I simply did not want somebody (e.g. a big company with a big team) grabbing my code along the way and running away with it.
Sounds like a great reason to use the AGPL! Can always switch the license for later releases as you gain traction.
> Now imagine that the reasoning for the license choices being incompatible was not to protect user rights, and not simply a matter of differing policies between different organizations and their open source releases, but rather transparently a ploy to protect a profit model. This is where people's aggravation turns to anger, because it then feels like the open source label is being used to pull people in, then the more restrictive licenses are being used to seek rent forever after.
Anyone interpreting AGPL that way is being ridiculous, though. If you treat the software as fully open source then AGPL doesn't harm you and there is no rent seeking. Any paid licenses are only for companies that don't want to embrace that piece of software being open source.
>If I contribute to an AGPL project and sign a CLA that assigns copyright to you, you might announce tomorrow that you are going to run off with my contribution and start only releasing new versions under a non-FOSS licence.
That is generally the point of a CLA. If that bothers you you're supposed to not contribute and not sign. The up side is that that revenue model might mean that they can pay people to do that work instead of relying upon drive by pull requests and maintainers dedicating their time for free.
Back in the early days of open source I saw a lot of people get mad at viral licensing because it did exactly what it was supposed to. There was some weird sort of entitlement complex going on where people felt entitled not only to use open source but that it was somehow unfair that they couldn't also violate the terms and conditions of using it.
I was similarly perplexed by the reaction back then too.
> I could get behind this if the open license is something like MIT or Apache, ideally WTFPL or public domain even.
That would defeat the purpose. If the license freely given to everyone were permissive, then companies would have no reason to pay for a different one.
> I worry that AGPL would lead to corruption in ways that I don't see yet, probably through copyright and IP
>This combination is pretty antithetical to the 'spirit' of open source (and especially 'libre software', which AGPL is supposed to be) since it basically ensures hegemony on any commercialization ecosystem to the original developer
The spirit of open source was never about giving away the software for free.
The community was concerned with free speech. You want free beer (freedom of commercialization).
AGPL also says that you have to make your changes available. It doesn't say you have to sign a CLA. If you value your "IP", don't. If you value having your changes pushed upstream, do. It's completely up to you.
Part of that argument is just a few companies' fear of contributing anything back, not that the license is so wide.
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