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Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

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Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#51

Post by nroah »

saurik wrote: post #25
nroah wrote: post #19

I don't understand why are there so many proponents of the AGPL when it's one of the most restrictive and therefore against freedom licences there are.

It removes developer freedoms in order to ensure user freedoms; claiming it is "against freedoms" is like saying the Bill of Rights--which restricts the acts of government--is "against freedom".

It's the opposite thing because there usually are a thousand users for every developer, so you're restricting the freedoms of 1000 people to defend the freedom of 1 person. While there's 1 government official whose freedoms are restricted for every 1000 people (made up numbers but you get the point)

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#52

Post by brobdingnagians »

callahad wrote: post #12
bitL wrote: post #10

Scratching Square off my list of service providers. I bet half of their datacenter software is in some way or the other using AGPL-licensed stuff; hypocrisy is just insane.

Is that plausible? I thought MongoDB was the only major, industrially successful AGPL project, and they relicensed last year to SSPL.

iText and Ghostscript use AGPL, but both have alternative licensing under commercial licenses. There really aren't many important AGPL projects and they are easy to avoid.

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#53

Post by brobdingnagians »

AGPL is really weird. There are widely differing opinions on what it means. There is this extreme where it is horrific, then you have this guy on stackoverflow who makes it shound like a kitten with claws removed [1] The ambiguity itself in interpretation (or at least how the "general public" interprets it) is a danger signal to avoid it.

[1][https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4691/java-and...]

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#54

Post by pmontra »

raverbashing wrote: post #29
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #6

I don't know if the response here is good, but https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1078... , gives a rationale for not including any AGPL "in" another work and might thus be the reason for the exclusion. See also, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2630... .

Yeah so if your service completely unrelated to the Stripe service uses AGPL you have to remove it? Doesn't sound good at all

Yes, I don't understand it. It's as if they had a term preventing customers from using Windows. Obviously (?) it's their right but why?

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#55

Post by mcny »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #52
callahad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that plausible? I thought MongoDB was the only major, industrially successful AGPL project, and they relicensed last year to SSPL.

iText and Ghostscript use AGPL, but both have alternative licensing under commercial licenses. There really aren't many important AGPL projects and they are easy to avoid.

I anal but My personal opinion is that if you use the ghostscript binaries by someone else and your software simply wants to create a PDF (for example) using ghostscript that is already installed on that machine, then it doesn't make sense to say I have to give the people who interact with the software my software's source.

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#56

Post by pmontra »

nroah wrote: post #51
saurik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It removes developer freedoms in order to ensure user freedoms; claiming it is "against freedoms" is like saying the Bill of Rights--which restricts the acts of government--is "against freedom".

It's the opposite thing because there usually are a thousand users for every developer, so you're restricting the freedoms of 1000 people to defend the freedom of 1 person. While there's 1 government official whose freedoms are restricted for every 1000 people (made up numbers but you get the point)

In this metaphor developer == government official and users == citizens, so you should agree with GP.

Again, AGPL restricts what developers can do with software to let users enjoy more freedom.

Actually I don't care much about that, I just don't want to see companies come and exploit developers work without having to give back anything. So I really favor GPL and AGPL. Then, if somebody prefers BSD and MIT, no hard feelings.

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#57

Post by pritambaral »

nroah wrote: post #51
saurik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It removes developer freedoms in order to ensure user freedoms; claiming it is "against freedoms" is like saying the Bill of Rights--which restricts the acts of government--is "against freedom".

It's the opposite thing because there usually are a thousand users for every developer, so you're restricting the freedoms of 1000 people to defend the freedom of 1 person. While there's 1 government official whose freedoms are restricted for every 1000 people (made up numbers but you get the point)

Please re-read your parent's point. By your own logic, if no.(users) > no.(devs), then it makes sense to prioritise freedoms(users) > freedoms(devs), which is precisely what the AGPL does.

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#58

Post by bitL »

jsty wrote: post #50
pas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does "linking" works in this regard? If I have an internal AGPL service do I have to open source that too? I mean my end users never interact with that service. They interact with a - let's say - proprietary one. And that service is the client to the AGPL service. Or anything AGPL touches turns into AGPL? What is considered touching? If I use an AGPL firewall do the packets turn into AGPL? If I use an AGPL log ag…

This is half the reason why many large companies have prohibitions on using AGPL code - no one is quite sure exactly what counts as 'interacting remotely', and thus what would be in scope for the source release requirements. In the absence of any case law to clarify the situation, many orgs just prefer not to bring in that uncertainty in the first place.

Usually AGPL products are dual licensed, allowing development of sustainable free software businesses, so I suspect the real reason is that companies simply don't want to pay for commercial licenses.

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#59

Post by merb »

nabla9 wrote: post #22

This makes absolutely no sense. I'm almost certain that Square lawyers fucked up big time. They looked at the AGPL and completely misunderstood the context. There is no way in hell anyone can interpret AGPL in a way that makes Square responsible for any license violations their customers make selling software.

I see that aswell. else, google would need to provide the source code for gcloud, since I can run agpl software on top of their compute nodes... like wtf?

Re: Square’s terms of service forbid use of AGPL-licensed software in online stores

#60

Post by unilynx »

Might Square be doing this just to prevent their customers from mistakingly including AGPL in their frontend?

"we know we're not liable, but the customer might get into trouble, let's make it easy to understand what can and can't be done and just forbid it"

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