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The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

drewdevault.com

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Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#311

Post by simion314 »

knorker wrote: post #308
simion314 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean use your judgement, say you want to do npm install X, do you call your lawyers all the time or use your judgement? Don't do X because Google is doing it, think for yourself and if you consider that you are not sure then ask for an expert. My point is if Microsoft says GPL is evil and you believe that and later when MS is open sourcing stuff and contributing to Linux you will have to admit that maybe MS had a g…

> I mean use your judgement, say you want to do npm install X, do you call your lawyers all the time or use your judgement? Before starting to use code for my business, I'd check the license, yes. Almost all the time it's a standard one, so I know approximately that yes BSD, MIT, GPL, etc… means. Though I have to be careful about BSD with advertising clause. Before starting to depend on code for my business, yes I wo…

>But just because someone has a reason to do something, doesn't mean they did it. It's not an argument about correctness.

Exactly, Google using or not using a license or some shady practice does not mean it is correct. It sucks that in US you have this weird thing where until someone is brought to court you are not sure what the rules actually are interpreted, from what the other comments mentioned the author(a lawyer) responded to this concerns and clarified things but yeah, we might need to forever wait or find some more courage

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#312

Post by st1ck »

n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #62

Hello, While I'm employed to develop an agpl software, and I fond of this license, it's clear that with the wrong actors it can be a threat to some businesses. I'll tell you a little story that happened around 10 years ago: I got a call from a representative of Oracle, he asked me if we where using MySQL, and if I could described him how, because he wanted to help us make Better use of this tool. We where pretty happ…

> The argument that made them stop was when we told us that we where hosting the applications.

I didn't get that, can you please rephrase?

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#313

Post by joshuamorton »

zeveb wrote: post #306
joshuamorton wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Derivative work and complete corresponding source has not been tested w.r.t. Google's monorepo (or similar situations), because under the terms of the gplv2/3, Google doesn't distribute any software. There's an entire class of tooling to make sure that GPL-tainted software isn't distributed ( https://opensource.google/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#restrict... ), but because the class of software that Google distributes u…

> There's an entire class of tooling to make sure that GPL-tainted software isn't distributed Amazing the lengths people go to in order to avoid sharing and treating others well! Imagine if they did the opposite: imagine if they just freely shared their source code.

I mean, there's some amount of code Google really doesn't want to share (it's not shared with me and I and I work there) for various reasons including security. So I imagine there would be downsides ( and not a whole lot of up, much of the useful stuff is already shared)

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#314

Post by jpalomaki »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #12

> Obligatory: I’m not a lawyer; this is for informational purposes only. and > Google states that if, for example, Google Maps used PostGIS as its data store, and PostGIS used the AGPL, Google would be required to release the Google Maps code. This is not true. They would be required to release their PostGIS patches in this situation. AGPL does not extend the GPL in that it makes the Internet count as a form of linki…

Back-in-the-days MySQL had the view of GPL that if your application strictly required MySQL database, the GPL license would extend to it. Even if the app would only connected to the database over network.

”A license is required if [...] You have a commercial application that ONLY works with MySQL and ships the application with the MySQL server. This is because we view this as linking even if it is done over the network.”[1]

Not sure if they ever actually enforced this rule.

I wrote this just to point out that different companies can view these licenses differently. If company chooses AGPL, they clearly want to block certain use cases. I would be cautious when trying to dance around the limitations.

[1] http://ww2.cs.lamar.edu/doc/mysql/manual_Licensing_and_Suppo...

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#315

Post by labcomputer »

st1ck wrote: post #312
n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #62

Hello, While I'm employed to develop an agpl software, and I fond of this license, it's clear that with the wrong actors it can be a threat to some businesses. I'll tell you a little story that happened around 10 years ago: I got a call from a representative of Oracle, he asked me if we where using MySQL, and if I could described him how, because he wanted to help us make Better use of this tool. We where pretty happ…

> The argument that made them stop was when we told us that we where hosting the applications. I didn't get that, can you please rephrase?

The GPL only applies when you distribute software. The person you're distributing it to can request (and you must provide) source for GPL-derived works.

A service provider who hosts applications does not distribute software. They use it internally to provide the service. Thus, they do not trigger the distribution part of the GPL.

So Oracle can't say "you have to distribute source to your GPL-derived work or pay us lots of money" because you didn't distribute binaries for your GPL-derived work.

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#316

Post by GordonS »

dekhn wrote: post #310

Back when I was a postdoc I talked to my advisor about GPL and BSD. The advisor (who was a supremely intelligent person) said the simplest, clearest possible thing I could imagine: "I wouldn't license software under GPL because I read the GPL license and couldn't understand what it was saying. I read the BSD license and it was totally clear. I want to license something using a license that makes technical sense to me…

Yep, this is precisely why I refuse to use GPL or AGPL, but am completely comfortable with BSD.

If I'm going to be bound by T's and C's, I need to be able to understand the implications - there is just too much ambiguity and room for bad actors (e.g. Oracle) with GPL and AGPL.

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#317

Post by joshuamorton »

woofie11 wrote: post #287
joshuamorton wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that Daniel works for Google, and is one of the people who makes such decisions about OSS for Google, so if you think he made the decision with a good rationale, then so did Google, since his decision was Google's.

I did not realize that. I read the one link. That's all I know about Daniel. He sounded reasonable there and what he wrote made sense. There are quite a few logical leaps between: 1) Daniel writing a reasonable post on HN 2) Daniel being correct in everything he does 3) Daniel making all decisions for Google 4) Daniel being the one who handles all communications about those decisions All I know is #1. The logic chain…

None of those follow. The implication is Daniel wrote a post about why Google made a decision.

That's the entire chain of reasoning. Nothing about him always being right, only him being right in a context where your already admitted he was right. Nothing about him anyways being a decision maker, just the belief that he isn't lying about Google's reasoning.

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#318

Post by yencabulator »

lmm wrote: post #290
yencabulator wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they now in violation of the license? Maybe they are. But not doing that would have killed the company , so the uncertainty was likely considered acceptable. The punishment for violating a Microsoft license is paying Microsoft more money. The cost of not doing that would have likely been more. The punishment for building your SaaS on AGPL code and having court decide on the virality on a non-favorable way is mu…

> The punishment for building your SaaS on AGPL code and having court decide on the virality on a non-favorable way is much more severe, and cannot in general be immediately solved with a little extra money transferred between two companies. This is also FUD. There's no guarantee that Microsoft wouldn't stand on their rights, demand their statutory $50k/infringement, and refuse to sell you any more licenses going for…

There's rarely a singular author of an AGPL library, and that's part of the problem -- the business is not likely to have someone to negotiate with. Microsoft is much more of a known quantity, and the likely risk can be put into dollars relatively easily, compared to the AGPL situation.

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#319

Post by woofie11 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #317
woofie11 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not realize that. I read the one link. That's all I know about Daniel. He sounded reasonable there and what he wrote made sense. There are quite a few logical leaps between: 1) Daniel writing a reasonable post on HN 2) Daniel being correct in everything he does 3) Daniel making all decisions for Google 4) Daniel being the one who handles all communications about those decisions All I know is #1. The logic chain…

None of those follow. The implication is Daniel wrote a post about why Google made a decision. That's the entire chain of reasoning. Nothing about him always being right, only him being right in a context where your already admitted he was right. Nothing about him anyways being a decision maker, just the belief that he isn't lying about Google's reasoning.

In that case, your post was a complete non sequitur. Drew is responding to this aggressive and misleading Google page:

https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

He is not responding to a random post from a Googler on HN, or to Google's internal policies or decision-making processes. Google has a bunch of scary-sounding public-facing FUD about the AGPL, containing a bunch of legal nonsense, which is scaring a lot of people. That's out-of-line with Google's former policy of not being evil. This whole discussion has that as the overarching context.

That a reasonable Googler posted a reasonable argument somewhere about why Google made the internal decision has no connection to this discussion. If Daniel's rationale is why Google made the decision, Google should by all means post it on the page above.

As a footnote, most companies I know which use AGPL code keep a clean bright line between AGPL and non-AGPL. That's a pretty sensible policy. AGPL is mostly used for things like stand-alone apps, which don't link to anything, rather than for things like libraries which link to internal systems. People contribute code to AGPL projects without hesitation if there's a bug.

Re: The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with

#320

Post by joshuamorton »

woofie11 wrote: post #319
joshuamorton wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those follow. The implication is Daniel wrote a post about why Google made a decision. That's the entire chain of reasoning. Nothing about him always being right, only him being right in a context where your already admitted he was right. Nothing about him anyways being a decision maker, just the belief that he isn't lying about Google's reasoning.

In that case, your post was a complete non sequitur. Drew is responding to this aggressive and misleading Google page: https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ He is not responding to a random post from a Googler on HN, or to Google's internal policies or decision-making processes. Google has a bunch of scary-sounding public-facing FUD about the AGPL, containing a bunch of legal nonsense, which is scaring a…

Can you explain what about Daniel's explanation is incompatible with what's at your link? I don't see how they disagree.

> AGPL is mostly used for things like stand-alone apps, which don't link to anything, rather than for things like libraries which link to internal systems.

Right, except for when they don't, which is just as (if not more) important from a legal perspective.

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