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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

#111

Post by emptyparadise »

Big corporations avoiding AGPL like the plague makes it a much better "don't be evil" license than any other attempts at making one of those. If anything, I'd love to see some dual license scheme where a different license is available only to small developers or non-profits, rather rather than corporations with bags of cash. I wonder how that can be enforced - perhaps some sort of a CLA that only gives limited rights to relicense instead of just handing over the copyright entirely.

And yeah, this goes entirely counter to making profit, but hey, I think we're privileged enough to afford to try ideas like this.

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

#112

Post by saagarjha »

tzs wrote: post #67

> Any users of such software are entitled to the source code under the terms of the AGPL, including users accessing it over the network such as with their web browser or via an API or internet protocol That doesn't seem to be quite right. It makes it sound like the source code entitlement applies to all users. The "including users accessing it over the network" is redundant then because they are a subset of all users…

Surely the user source entitlement also applies if I interact with the software without a network in between? Otherwise, that would make AGPL a strangely more-but-also-less permissive license than GPL…

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

#113

Post by orangecat »

saagarjha wrote: post #89
jeffbee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL virality is considered such a big risk, and the "scripts to control" clause is considered so sweeping and vague, that Google has its own internal version of R that won't download AGPL libraries from CRAN, because just looking looking at the performance stats from production services in R using an AGPL library could taint the source code of the service itself. Nobody knows.

> because just looking looking at the performance stats from production services in R using an AGPL library could taint the source code of the service itself I think this is what is being referred to as "FUD". Anyone can go after you for some sort of supposed license issue, but at some point you need to consider that many of these are extremely far-fetched and serve only to quite literally add FUD around AGPL.

Until recently, it was "extremely far-fetched" that copyright law prevents you from independently reimplementing an API. Google has particularly good reason to be paranoid about this stuff.

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

#114

Post by jeffbee »

pedrocr wrote: post #98
jeffbee wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It meets the literal definition for each of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That is true. But the uncertainty is the point. Why risk something as valuable as Google's proprietary source code over something with as little utility as some random CRAN package?

The definition of FUD is that you are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt as a tactic not that you yourself are afraid, uncertain or have any doubts.

I think the “spreading” aspect is overstated. These are clearly Google’s internal docs that just happen to be accessible to the public.

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

#115

Post by tzs »

woofie11 wrote: post #43
marcinzm wrote: post #17

> 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 linking which creates a derivative work, as Google implies, but rather that it mak…

Eben Moglen wrote the AGPL. There's a standard process courts use to figure this stuff out. Intent fits into it. Eben Moglen clearly states what he meant in many talks. Courts favor intended interpretation of a contract. That makes the risk pretty small.

In the case of ambiguity in a contract, courts look at the intent of the parties to the contract. In almost all cases Moglen will not be a party, and at least one of the actual parties will not be aware of those talks or their content, so Moglen's talks on the matter won't really be of much use.

Courts will also look at the bargaining power of the parties. If the party offering the contract is a lot more powerful than the party accepting the contract, they will tend to favor the accepting party when it comes to ambiguous terms.

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

#116

Post by nine_k »

belorn wrote: post #110
cic48 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve taken AGPL through two FAANG reviews. Both arrived at the same very-much-not-FUD legal conclusion. Paragraph 1 of section 13 requires modifications to be disclosed and source code for them to be offered to remote users. The license uses the term of art Corresponding Source for this. Corresponding Source is defined in section 1 in a crystal clear way. Two separate teams of lawyers concluded that they could cohere…

Under the same meeting ask the lawyer about the linux kernel and where the border is for its license. They will likely give a similar answer, through if the company relies on selling devices with a linux kernel the risk vs reward will result in a very different decision in the end.

GPL 2 has been tried in courts many times, and there is a consensus that Linux kernel's license applies to the kernel (publish your patches) and not applications that use the kernel. E.g. Go is shipped under a BSD license, not GPL, and sidesteps libc for quite a few APIs.

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

#117

Post by rydre »

saagarjha wrote: post #97
rydre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so? Apple should be punished for many other things like abusing dominance to get advantage in other industries, not this entitled "contributes nothing back". It's not Apple's problem that the software was really free. If it were not free, Apple could have gone the windows route and make their own everything. Would not be hard since they control hardware. Nothing sad here. Just the entitlement of people who do no…

Yes, Linux, the OS that powers the majority of the web, the OS that runs the backend for even the most GPL-allergic companies like Apple, the OS that is present in over a billion shipping Android devices today? That Linux? The reason people don't know about Linux is because it's lacking in consumer-facing design and because much of its use is largely invisible, not because it's GPL.

> The reason people don't know about Linux is because it's lacking in consumer-facing design and because much of its use is largely invisible, not because it's GPL.

The problem with GPL/GNU/Linux is that most of the time only toxic idealistic programmers like it who do not have a life. Android is linux only in name. Most of the useful parts are binary blobs. Designers/UI/UX people have a life and are not too logical. They're not going to want to contribute for free to something like Linux where no one knows where to start. There is no proper designer tooling for them. And whatever the tooling is, it will be created by programmers, which mean no input of the users. So predictably a dumpster fire for real non programmer end users.

Most people are not programmers and they want GUI they can comfortably explore not some undocumented CLI. To the everyday consumer, the GUI has more visible value not that boring kernel. You could have the same interface and replace Linux with and real free Unix type OS and non programmers would not notice.

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

#118

Post by marcinzm »

victorkab wrote: post #70

Disclaimer - As a CTO of a company I have to take a stance on these issues. As a matter of fact, as you raise money, part of the due diligence is to audit the libraries that you use to make sure that you don't use libraries that can jeopardize the future of the company. Using an AGPL library for a Saas company will be flagged as a risk by lawyers during the due diligence process. At Truework, we love open source and…

And if you rely on large companies as clients they will have a line asking about GPL/AGPL library use during contracting for similar risk reasons.

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

#119

Post by labster »

It reminds me of the story I heard around a campfire once, about a programmer who decided to fix a bug in a single AGPL module, and they were forced to make their entire code open source. Even today, long after the bankruptcy, they say you can still hear the screams in the shuttered, decaying boardroom. And the bug somehow got unfixed. It’s out there now, waiting ... for its next victim.

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

#120

Post by debiandev »

cic48 wrote: post #33
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…

I’ve taken AGPL through two FAANG reviews. Both arrived at the same very-much-not-FUD legal conclusion. Paragraph 1 of section 13 requires modifications to be disclosed and source code for them to be offered to remote users. The license uses the term of art Corresponding Source for this. Corresponding Source is defined in section 1 in a crystal clear way. Two separate teams of lawyers concluded that they could cohere…

> AGPL is unchallenged in court. The risk to being wrong about it as huge. It’s risk aversion, not ideology, and it’s important to remember that identifying an argument as part of legal review does not call it the correct one. Anyone who’s ever worked with legal matters knows there is no such thing as “correct,” there are rulings. The existence of the argument condemns the license for FAANG, not its validity.

Having worked with lawyers, this largely overstates the risk. Companies are happy to discuss, modify and sign new contracts every day.

All these contracts are "unchallenged in court", by definition, because they are entirely custom.

A lot of software licensing contracts for closed source have complex and restrictive clauses to prevent "renting" such software through SaaS or weakening limitations using legal loopholes.

Yet companies still sign such contracts.

Another type of custom and complex contract is employment.

Furthermore, companies sue each other every other day over contract violation around IP, copyright, trademarks, patents but also employment contracts, rent, building regulations, shipment delays, all of that.

The idea that a FLOSS license is some scary monster is propaganda.

The goal of such propaganda is to drive the FLOSS community to provide valuable software for free and with zero strings attached - aka free labor.

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