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AGPL License

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Re: AGPL License

#71

Post by mumblemumble »

andybak wrote: post #57
brazzy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

I agree with your feelings on this last point. I wonder how it's working out for them as I imagine it's a turn off for corporate buyers as well as lone devs and small shops.

I doubt it's a turn-off for corporate buyers in the large, but it's absolutely a turn-off for dev teams within corporations. Especially nowadays in an increasingly Agile world where everything is due 2 weeks from when you start work on it.

A developer might be quite willing to go to their manager with, "Hey, can we buy X? It will cost $Y, and save us $Z worth of time." But "Call for a quote" is a quagmire: They can't (and don't want to) negotiate prices themselves, and they also don't want to annoy their boss by causing them to spend the next 3 months being hounded by sales people.

Re: AGPL License

#72

Post by ansgri »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #27
zeveb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I never understand this. I get not wanting to build a community around a project, handling contributions, etc. But why not just dump the source code somewhere?

Because it's huge (perceived) risk for (often) little gain. These projects (I'm especially familiar with research) aren't known for code quality and following best practices regarding security etc. So you open yourself for shaming and casual hacking for some unquantifiable benefit of open-source contributions.

Re: AGPL License

#73

Post by api »

thomzane wrote: post #64
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…

The thing about modern code is that anyone can take a project, turn it's function into a webpage, and charge money without revealing that you could run the program on your own machine. If you license all of your code under the AGPLv3, you will at least see if someone is using it out in the wild and maybe even get some contributions to your project.

This is called "SaaSification" and there is a debate over to what extent it violates the spirit of open source and what if anything ought to be done about it.

Re: AGPL License

#74

Post by [deleted] »

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 )

[deleted]

Re: AGPL License

#75

Post by [deleted] »

protanopia wrote: post #58
zeveb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it's working as intended: preventing services from restricting the rights of their users to run, modify & share source code.

IMO, the goal of open source licenses is to encourage more usage of open source. If AGPL is preventing companies from using it, then it is accomplishing the opposite.

[deleted]

Re: AGPL License

#76

Post by bo1024 »

Not common that you see a philosophy more radical than Stallman's.

As I understand Stallman's free software philosophy -- the GPL -- the idea is that code must respect the person running it / using it.

Under this philosophy, if I am communicating with you, it's not up to me what tools you use in formulating your responses. And whether those tools respect your freedom or not. So GPL only applies to those directly using the code, not others they interact with using the outputs of that code.

I'm wondering if the AGPL is supposed to come from a different philosophical foundation, or if it would be better understood as an economic / power-structure tool?

Re: AGPL License

#77

Post by ghaff »

msla wrote: post #33
ghaff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s effort. People will want you to make enhancements and maybe expect changes. It may link to proprietary libraries. Open source is not really just about dumping code on GitHub.

https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95... > Open Source is Not About You > The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18538123

To be clear, if someone wants to just do a code dump under an open source license, ignore it, and send any communications about the code to /dev/null that’s their choice. Probably not a very useful one but a valid one.

Re: AGPL License

#78

Post by thomzane »

api wrote: post #73
thomzane wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about modern code is that anyone can take a project, turn it's function into a webpage, and charge money without revealing that you could run the program on your own machine. If you license all of your code under the AGPLv3, you will at least see if someone is using it out in the wild and maybe even get some contributions to your project.

This is called "SaaSification" and there is a debate over to what extent it violates the spirit of open source and what if anything ought to be done about it.

AGPLv3 is the only solution I see.

Re: AGPL License

#79

Post by topkai22 »

tokai wrote: post #40
Dayshine wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source code will indicate where/how the data is input, processed and stored. It might help an attacker compromise the application in any number of ways. There's non-trivial risk there, enough to make it an ethical concern. So, in order to use AGPL software, you have to open source your entire source code, which means you have to go through a long and arduous risk assessment which will likely decide you can't.

Security through obscurity is not security at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs's_principle

I’ve always felt this argument breaks down with smaller scale targets. I’d argue security through obscurity is not security, but there can be safety in obscurity.

There are a massive number of systems that are completely bespoke for small organizations or even individuals, and their user base isn’t going to grow.

What’s more, these systems are extremely liable to rot- the contract developer writes the system and moves on. That means library versions in the repo aren’t going to get updated when new vulnerabilities are found. So now this random 1 GitHub Star system is siting unpatched out for anyone to see.

Now what might have been a hard to find but exploitable issue risks getting a black hat spotlight shown in it.

Re: AGPL License

#80

Post by lucasyvas »

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.

You can always change the license.
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