Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why we picked AGPL

blog.paradedb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 312 posts

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#151

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

thisislife2 wrote: post #47
Hamcha wrote: post #32

Correction: they chose AGPL with a poison pill (CLA) so they can benefit from it and take it away whenever they want more.

Note that they can't "take it away" completely. The AGPL ensures that the community AGPL licensed code will always have to be open source, and that anybody else can use it too. So a developer who has contributed to an AGPL codebase cannot be denied access to it. Due to the AGPL license, any code will always be open source and thus the CLA cannot claim exclusivity over the contributed code and prevent its (re)use by t…

> The AGPL ensures that the community AGPL licensed code will always have to be open source, and that anybody else can use it too.

That's true in the sense that there will always be an AGPL version, but it's not true that "anybody else" can use it to. In many situations you need to acquire a non AGPL license from the original copyright holder to be legally able to use the software in certain environments. That's why CLAs are important so that there is always a copyright holder that can give you a non AGPL version.

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#152

Post by ashkankiani »

haytamoptika wrote: post #144
goodpoint wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I use Minio in my stack without modifications (as a file server that my other services interact with via an API), do I have to AGPL all the stuff the touches Minio or not No and it's spelled out very clearly in the license.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html "However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the free and nonfree programs communicate at arms length, that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program." I think you can interact with GPL/AGPL and retain your code propietary by: - Don't…

"This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program."

In the Basic permissions of the actual content of the license https://github.com/minio/minio/blob/master/LICENSE

It's not that difficult to parse if you actually read it top to bottom instead of skimming.

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#153

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

dns_snek wrote: post #122
gumby wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: my quick read is that they are trying to do the right thing. My not super-close reading is that this is actually reasonable (but note: I wrote the original GNU blanket assignment back around 1989 or 1990 so you may consider my perspective bogus). This agreement says that you confirm that you have the right to license your contribution (that what you wrote isn’t actually your employer’s), and that they can use…

Interesting. I think concerns about legality of contributions are completely understandable. But doesn't this CLA in particular (and most CLAs out there generally) assign the company behind it a license to distribute all contributions under any license they wish? Specifically the part that I quoted where contributors give them an "irrevocable copyright license" to "sublicense" their contributions? As far as I underst…

> As far as I understand, this allows them to unilaterally re-license the project as a whole (to proprietary or non-free open source) without asking contributors for permission.

That's generally how CLAs work, to enable re-licensing. For many commercial AGPL projects that's also needed because the copyright holding entity will sell/provide non AGPL versions to customers that legally cannot use AGPL software.

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#154

Post by ashkankiani »

jan_g wrote: post #118

I don't know about ParadeDB, but this was very off-putting for me in case of Minio when they switched to AGPL. If you check their answers to various license questions, they are essentially this: if you use Minio in your stack/product (for profit), then we recommend our commercial license or consult with a lawyer if your use case is covered by AGPL or not. What me and I guess many others wanted was a simple yes/no to…

Copying reply to a child comment:

"This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program."

In the Basic permissions of the actual content of the license https://github.com/minio/minio/blob/master/LICENSE

It's not that difficult to parse if you actually read it top to bottom instead of skimming.

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#155

Post by mrbluecoat »

goodpoint wrote: post #129
jan_g wrote: post #118

I don't know about ParadeDB, but this was very off-putting for me in case of Minio when they switched to AGPL. If you check their answers to various license questions, they are essentially this: if you use Minio in your stack/product (for profit), then we recommend our commercial license or consult with a lawyer if your use case is covered by AGPL or not. What me and I guess many others wanted was a simple yes/no to…

> if I use Minio in my stack without modifications (as a file server that my other services interact with via an API), do I have to AGPL all the stuff the touches Minio or not No and it's spelled out very clearly in the license.

I think the length of this HN discussion is evidence enough that AGPL isn't clear.

In my experience, organizations that use AGPL do so to 1) ward off an active non-paying community with its associated support cost, 2) claim open source to help convince you to buy their software/service, 3) hire skill-vetted programmers, 4) allow third-party security audits, and/or 5) avoid being jaded by someone that can market or host their solution better than they can.

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#156

Post by jan_g »

ashkankiani wrote: post #154
jan_g wrote: post #118

I don't know about ParadeDB, but this was very off-putting for me in case of Minio when they switched to AGPL. If you check their answers to various license questions, they are essentially this: if you use Minio in your stack/product (for profit), then we recommend our commercial license or consult with a lawyer if your use case is covered by AGPL or not. What me and I guess many others wanted was a simple yes/no to…

Copying reply to a child comment: "This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program." In the Basic permissions of the actual content of the license https://github.com/minio/minio/blob/master/LICENSE It's not that difficult to parse if you actually read it top to bottom instead of skimming.

But you forgot to cite the next sentence:

   The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work.
So, what is 'covered work'? The license says this:

    A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.
Do you still think it's clearly written license? To me it's dubious enough that I wanted an explicit answer from the authors of Minio. Failing to get it, I decided to move away from Minio.

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#157

Post by jillesvangurp »

JohannesSuenden wrote: post #24

I love the AGPL. I can't imagine it becoming popular for generic business functionality in library form, but for highly-specialized libraries (in my case scientific with industrial applications) it was everything I was looking for --- not least because automated license scanners flag it and scare potential parasites away. It's also a great choice for complete pieces of software (such as DBs, as in this case) to offer…

I'm actually not a fan of this restrictive license and the even more restrictive contributor license that is in place here which is what enables them to sell closed source versions of the software and potentially close source entirely (as other companies have done). AGPL without this is not very practical for companies as it makes selling commercial licenses impractical and is a bit of a turnoff for commercial users.

> Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Company and to recipients of software distributed by the Company a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works.

If you are happy to contribute code and then have them take it and sell it under a closed source license; or at a later stage just decide to relicense the whole thing as closed source; go for it. But most external contributors probably wouldn't like this.

Usually the effect that this has is that the OSS contributor community is pretty much exclusively employees of the company involved. I can't imagine third party companies agreeing on working on this or paying their people to work on this. Why would they?

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#158

Post by actionfromafar »

franga2000 wrote: post #147
dspillett wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't about modifications to the library/service itself, but whether with other code linking to it in any way is what you have considered a derivative work that should also be covered by the AGPL. For a library I'd say that was a definite yes. For a service it is someone's less clear, some provide connective tissue (language bindings or other access modules) under less strict licenses which creates an ob…

The "any coupling" logic would also make anything running on Linux GPL, which is definitely not the case. Using background service such as Minio as an unmodified black box for data storage as part of your app is unambiguously not derivative work. If you were to write something like a management UI for Minio and offer it with your hosted Minio service, then I can at least see the argument, although it still doesn't co…

The Linux GPL license has an explicit excemption for binaries running under Linux. So it's not a great example.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/excep...

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#159

Post by afro88 »

goodpoint wrote: post #129
jan_g wrote: post #118

I don't know about ParadeDB, but this was very off-putting for me in case of Minio when they switched to AGPL. If you check their answers to various license questions, they are essentially this: if you use Minio in your stack/product (for profit), then we recommend our commercial license or consult with a lawyer if your use case is covered by AGPL or not. What me and I guess many others wanted was a simple yes/no to…

> if I use Minio in my stack without modifications (as a file server that my other services interact with via an API), do I have to AGPL all the stuff the touches Minio or not No and it's spelled out very clearly in the license.

Is it? Doesn't it depend on whether your stack depends on it to function, or if it is standalone that your stack can connect to but doesn't rely on?

Re: Why we picked AGPL

#160

Post by ashkankiani »

jan_g wrote: post #156
ashkankiani wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying reply to a child comment: "This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program." In the Basic permissions of the actual content of the license https://github.com/minio/minio/blob/master/LICENSE It's not that difficult to parse if you actually read it top to bottom instead of skimming.

But you forgot to cite the next sentence: The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work. So, what is 'covered work'? The license says this: A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program. Do you still think it's clearly written license? To me it's dubious enough that I wanted an explicit answer f…

If the output of your program is an copy of minio then it is also covered by AGPL is what that means. I think it's just covering the case where you are redistributing minio in a way such as decompressing and producing the output.

I still don't think it's that confusing. Unlimited running of it is already covered without exception. The next line only refers to the output of the covered work.

If the output of your web server is redistributing minio then you are under AGPL

Post reply on HN