AGPL License • Hacker News Board

Re: AGPL License

#41

Post by arghwhat » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

Dayshine wrote: post #28

zeveb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would charities and academic institutions be writing anything but free software?

A research project might be collecting sensitive personal information. A charity might have a public but internal management system for staff or related organisations to organise on. In either case, being open source increases security risk.

> In either case, being open source increases security risk.

This is blatantly false. Any claim that closed source is provides any form of security is entirely a claim in security by obscurity.

If open sourcing your code presents any risk to sensitive personal information, then that means that you are already grossly mishandling this information. Whether or not your open source your code at this point doesn't matter—the harm is already done.

Re: AGPL License

#42

Post by theawesomekhan » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #38

theawesomekhan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are awaiting a response from IText for the license, but for now Apache PDFBox got us the same results

you won't use itext, their quotes are hilarious.

Probably yes, because seems their licensing policy is not very user-friendly or straightforward. On their How-To-Buy Page (https://itextpdf.com/en/how-buy) the licensing model is pretty convoluted

Re: AGPL License

#43

Post by theawesomekhan » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #38

theawesomekhan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are awaiting a response from IText for the license, but for now Apache PDFBox got us the same results

you won't use itext, their quotes are hilarious.

nonetheless, I found their library pretty easy to use and faster compared to the competitors. Sadly due to the licensing issues, I think I won't be using it for sometime ( or ever incase quote is above and beyond expectations )

Re: AGPL License

#44

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

theawesomekhan wrote: post #6

Google does not allow usage of AGPL code. https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

It makes a lot of sense. If a lick of AGPL hits any of their web services, they have to make the source available. I imagine they use plenty of FLOSS on their back-end servers, and I imagine quite a bit is GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache and so on.

Re: AGPL License

#45

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #15

theawesomekhan wrote: post #6

Google does not allow usage of AGPL code. https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

If you work in a startup, it will bite you during due diligence when a potential acquirer is evaluating your intellectual property. I would give the AGPL a wide berth.

This is why I avoid AGPL projects for potential ideas / side projects that could potentially turn useful.

Re: AGPL License

#46

Post by brazzy » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

daurnimator wrote: post #8

theawesomekhan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently used the iText Library for PDF parsing in java. Everything was alright until I discovered their AGPL license. https://itextpdf.com/en/how-buy/agpl-license Since our product was proprietary, we had to remove the library since our product would also come under the AGPL license or we would have to buy their commercial version, for which we can get a "quote"( https://itextpdf.com/en/how-buy )

What did you replace it with? Why wouldn't iText deserve your money if you were using it in your commercial product?

> Why wouldn't iText deserve your money if you were using it in your commercial product?

Because they're not even saying how much money. "Call us for a quote" usually means "Let's start the sales dance in which we try to gauge how much we can fleece you for", which also means it's not going to be a quick answer.

For me it means the software is immediately categorized as "to be considered only once all other options have been exhausted".

Re: AGPL License

#47

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #37

Dayshine wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What improvements? AGPL requires open-sourcing your entire project (authentication, payment platform, etc) just to link to a backend PDF processing library. AGPL does not have a linking exception.

Putting it in a microservice should get around that, right?

That might be the only way, which is kind of sad, till they patch that loophole, if it's not already patched.

Might also be a startup idea: AGPL servers as a Service. Someone else runs it for you, you make requests against it.

Re: AGPL License

#48

Post by jpalomaki » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #37

Dayshine wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What improvements? AGPL requires open-sourcing your entire project (authentication, payment platform, etc) just to link to a backend PDF processing library. AGPL does not have a linking exception.

Putting it in a microservice should get around that, right?

That’s a pretty good question. And likely there won’t be a definitive answer until there’s a decision from court.

I think in these cases one should try to understand what the IPR holder had in mind when they picked AGPL and not for example GPL or Apache. Trying to find loopholes might just get you into trouble in future.

Re: AGPL License

#49

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #37

Dayshine wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What improvements? AGPL requires open-sourcing your entire project (authentication, payment platform, etc) just to link to a backend PDF processing library. AGPL does not have a linking exception.

Putting it in a microservice should get around that, right?

[deleted]

Re: AGPL License

#50

Post by mboehm » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

theawesomekhan wrote: post #7

betamaxthetape wrote: post #5

I've always wondered about whether the AGPL is a good fit for software that isn't accessed over the network. At first glance this would appear to offer the exact same rights as the GPL in this scenario, however you then have the protection of the AGPL if the software was ever incorporated into a networked program. Does anyone have any experience with this? Are there pitfalls to using the AGPL for a regular program th…

I recently used the iText Library for PDF parsing in java. Everything was alright until I discovered their AGPL license. https://itextpdf.com/en/how-buy/agpl-license Since our product was proprietary, we had to remove the library since our product would also come under the AGPL license or we would have to buy their commercial version, for which we can get a "quote"( https://itextpdf.com/en/how-buy )

There is an actively maintained fork of iText: https://github.com/LibrePDF/OpenPDF

From their background section: It is a fork of iText version 4, more specifically iText svn tag 4.2.0, which was hosted publicly on sourceforge with LGPL and MPL license headers in the source code, and lgpl and mpl license documents in the svn repository. Beginning with version 5.0 of iText, the developers have moved to the AGPL to improve their ability to sell commercial licenses.