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Minio Changes License to AGPL

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Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#81

Post by the_duke »

ddevault wrote: post #64

Minio's development culture has a very self-interested feel to it, like it's their thing moreso than the community's thing. Combine that with the corporate pandering it's designed for, and this was a long time coming. Back in February I remarked on IRC "I feel like minio is always one bad day away from changing to some bullshit proprietary license." I'm glad that it's the AGPL and not one of the nonfree fad licenses…

Is sublicensing and relicensing the same thing? Sublicensing to AGPL should definitely be OK, but does that mean they can just relicense all contributed code and remove all mentions of Apache2? Seems doubtful to me.

This GNU article [1] explicitly mentions that subsumed licenses still need to be mentioned in the source.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-compatibility.en.html

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#82

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

papercrane wrote: post #79
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #60

Why are most software engineers so terrible at basic comprehension? Licenses are just a set of instructions, how do we consistently fail to follow them? You can't relicense something that is Apache 2.0 as AGPL. You need explicit approval of every single contributor (whose code still exists in the project). You can also attach the AGPL, but it is not a superset of Apache 2.0, which for example contains constraints tha…

> In fact, one requirement is the very fact you can't remove the license text itself The same section with that requirement also says you may use a different license terms for that notice as long as it complies with the terms of the Apache 2.0 license. In this case since the AGPLv3 is a superset of the Apache 2.0 license it can be substituted for the Apache 2.0 license per these terms.

> since the AGPLv3 is a superset

It's not, and I already covered this.

AGPLv3 has nothing that is a direct superset of Apache 2.0's requirement 4b.

The closest is the section "5. Conveying Modified Source Versions." However, the terms are not the same. Section 5 is a subset of 4b, not a superset.

Specifically, 4b pertains to individual files, 5 pertains to the "work" as a whole.

The requirement to mark each modified file is not present in AGPLv3, ergo it's not a superset.

Also worth noting, in section 5 of the AGPLv3:

> Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.

The AGPLv3 is very explicit that it's on terms do not replace the terms of its aggregate components.

i.e. You can license a whole work as AGPLv3, but the components are still Apache 2.0. To use those components, you must adhere to those terms.

In this case, if you modify Apache 2.0 files, you must still indicate you've done so. So Minio should not be removing the Apache 2.0 from the repository, doing so is a violation of the Apache 2.0 and may cause contributors and users to also unknowingly violate the Apache 2.0.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#83

Post by tirrex »

imglorp wrote: post #56
marcinzm wrote: post #38

No PR and no discussion and no announcement. This will be a fun time bomb for anyone using Minio at a company where legal dislikes AGPL licenses.

What's the grief from legal? All you have to do is post source for changes you make to minio, right? That doesn't seem like a huge burden.

Some companies have no AGPL policy.

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

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#84

Post by ddevault »

the_duke wrote: post #81
ddevault wrote: post #64

Minio's development culture has a very self-interested feel to it, like it's their thing moreso than the community's thing. Combine that with the corporate pandering it's designed for, and this was a long time coming. Back in February I remarked on IRC "I feel like minio is always one bad day away from changing to some bullshit proprietary license." I'm glad that it's the AGPL and not one of the nonfree fad licenses…

Is sublicensing and relicensing the same thing? Sublicensing to AGPL should definitely be OK, but does that mean they can just relicense all contributed code and remove all mentions of Apache2? Seems doubtful to me. This GNU article [1] explicitly mentions that subsumed licenses still need to be mentioned in the source. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-compatibility.en.html

Hm, I'm not a lawyer, but the answer is... kind of. It's a bit complicated. I can understand a valid interpretation for either answer.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#85

Post by hardwaresofton »

Remember, AGPL does not stop you from self-hosting or running a business on the software! It only requires you to share changes if you modify the software, which is a very reasonable requirement.

I'm planning on launching a managed S3-alike service later this year and Minio is going to be what I use, it remains to be seen if they'll go to SSPL/BSL or anything else when enough people do this (maybe most wouldn't because of AGPL FUD so that's my uncommon advantage?).

On a wider note though, is this going to be the projects/companies now?

- Start permissively F/OSS project

- Entice the community to contribute/produce content/market

- (optional) Sell the project/cash out some how/get acquihired

- Change the license of the project

- Make all the new stuff source-available but not F/OSS to encourage people to get commercial licenses

- ???

- Insert ads/subtle advertisements/banners into the OSS product so people are discouraged from hosting it (this is speculation, I assume this is what comes next)

I sure do wish projects would be SSPL/BSL from the beginning, I want the freedom to be able to build a business on my freely obtained immensely valuable software, including hosting it, without worrying about rent seeking activity later.

PS: yes, I'm aware of how incredibly selfish that last bit sounds, but I want to be honest about it -- this is what everyone is doing and why F/OSS software won. There's a world where we can build sustainable F/OSS software that runs on something other than donations, and IMO it looks like what Let's Encrypt's managed to do, where organizations that gain immense value from something do revenue-share style deals, but that's a discussion for another time.

[EDIT] I just want to soften this -- I am NOT against companies making money from software. IMO AGPL is a great license because it actually maintains that freedom and requires contribution back (or monetary support). I just find that I am increasingly on edge whenever I see projects advertised as "open source" (but not free) and wonder if I'm just walking into a very nice, free-for-me mouse trap.

BSL is a very nice license as well, it's straight forward, and IMO a great way to build an open source software company -- no one gets mad at Sentry for their license terms, because it's straight forward and obvious, and still giving a way value for free, just on a time delay.

[EDIT2] I could have sworn there was a license that was like BSL but required anyone making over 1MM/year using the software to make some sort of contribution back, licenses like that might be cool too.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#86

Post by rad_gruchalski »

jnwatson wrote: post #45
enriquto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only have a problem if you modify anything in the source code of minio that you host. And even in that case, you only need to share your modifications of minio, not anything about the rest of your system. Doesn't seem too much of a problem, to begin with.

Or put a proxy in front of it.

Indeed. I predict that year 2022 will be the year of a sidecar protocol proxy service.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#87

Post by bsder »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #67
merb wrote: post #65

I'm not sure something like that is legal: - https://github.com/minio/minio/blob/master/pkg/argon2/argon2.go#L38 - https://github.com/golang/crypto/blob/master/argon2/argon2.go > forked from https://golang.org/x/crypto/argon2 > modified to be used with MinIO under GNU Affero General > Public License 3.0 license that can be found in > the LICENSE file. relicense the file based on a small change and also having two lic…

Looks like the original is under a permissive ("BSD-style") license, in which case they almost certainly can distribute it under any license they want.

They can distribute it, but this looks like it's changing the license. I thought that only the owner can change the license of the copyrighted file?

Now, you can include BSD-style files with GPL ones without issue--that's true. But I thought you can't change the license of a file from BSD to GPL unless you are the original owner.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#88

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

bsder wrote: post #87
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the original is under a permissive ("BSD-style") license, in which case they almost certainly can distribute it under any license they want.

They can distribute it, but this looks like it's changing the license. I thought that only the owner can change the license of the copyrighted file? Now, you can include BSD-style files with GPL ones without issue--that's true. But I thought you can't change the license of a file from BSD to GPL unless you are the original owner.

(IANAL) BSD-style licenses generally only require that the file and its derivatives retain the original authors copyright notice. Distributing it under a different license still allows you to fill the original requirements, so there's no conflict there. Or from a different angle, what exactly is the difference between including a BSD file in a GPL file vs including a BSD file in an empty file and then licensing the result as GPL?

Edit: Does it help if I tell you that more precisely they aren't relicensing the file but merely stacking licenses on the file? The process is purely additive.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#89

Post by wegs2 »

jchw wrote: post #57

I don’t necessarily think AGPL is the best license, but I am very glad it’s AGPL catching on and not SSPL and friends. I’ve spoken my piece in recent threads already, but I just think this is more friendly to the FOSS community even if it’s not perfect.

I don't think AGPL is a perfect license, but I do think it's the best.

The flaws it has are things like the poorly-written patent clause, verbosity, ambiguity on concepts like linking, and general lack of elegance. It runs into a lot of corner cases around where code looks like data or data looks like code; there isn't a clean separation.

GPLv2 was a brilliantly-drafted license.

For all those failings, AGPL seems like the right choice for people who want their code feeding into an open ecosystem, rather than coopted by corporate giants.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#90

Post by wegs2 »

jasonhansel wrote: post #55
eloff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies I've worked for had a blanket ban on AGPL. This is not a problem with the license, it's a problem with those companies. But it's still going to be a pain for the people who work there.

If more high-value projects adopt the AGPL, legal departments may be motivated to revisit those bans.

I drove a revisiting like this in more than one organization.

Fitting decisions like this around the status quo makes no sense. It's exactly actions like this which change the status quo. I'm happy to say there are dozens of organizations without AGPL bans thanks to one useful piece of code I wrote. Most are small, but one is in the tens of billions of dollars in valuation.

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