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That's company policy and not the fault of the license. EDIT: Unless you're making modifications to the software, the AGPL does not apply. EDIT2: http://www.a
by nopreserveroot 10y ago
That's company policy and not the fault of the license.
EDIT: Unless you're making modifications to the software, the AGPL does not apply.
EDIT2: http://www.affero.org/oagf.html#How_does_this_license_treat_commercial http://www.affero.org/oagf.html#How_does_this_license_treat_...
Specifically, the question, "How does this license treat commercial enterprise use over intranets and internal networks?"
- twic 10y agoIs that true? My understanding of the AGPL was that any software product which uses it as a component becomes subject to the AGPL - it has the linking semantics of the GPL, not the LGPL. If that's not the case, please do disabuse me of my misconception!
- comex 10y agoYes, it is like the GPL. But in this case, where the product is a standalone application, that distinction shouldn't matter unless you're actually planning on bundling it into your own product somehow.
- dekhn 10y agoI think your understanding of the AGPL (specfically) is in error.
- nopreserveroot 10y agoSee EDIT2 on my post.
- xxpor 10y ago>That's company policy Yes. I was just pointing out that regardless of modification/distribution/whatever, bigco policy is to not allow ANY AGPL code within a 10 mile radius of any computer owned by said company. The author(s) are free to use AGPL, but there are significant downsides if they care about adoption.
- yarrel 10y agoThey care about the freedom of software users, not weird corporate policies. Non-adoption by non-respecters of freedom isn't a downside.
- wpietri 10y agoIt's a downside if it leads to general non-adoption, either directly or because a competitor with a different license gets the market share. I'm all for the moral stance, but moral purity in a vacuum is essentially irrelevant. Effective morality is about impact on the world. A morality that's only about the good feelings of the purist is sterile self-indulgence.
- sjwright 10y agoPrecisely. And even RMS has been known to agree with that principle. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3 http://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3
- Manishearth 10y agoThese aren't "weird corporate policies", they're very sensible. If they wish to use such software they need to be very careful in how, and track its use, and they just don't think having such a framework is worth it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13342657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13342657 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13342804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13342804
- webmaven 10y ago> bigco policy is to not allow ANY AGPL code within a 10 mile radius of any computer owned by said company." Wait, that seems extremely paranoid, even if only meant figuratively... Can you explain the thinking on restricting the use of AGPL'd licensed applications?
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoYou can still make modifications so long as it isn't distributed outside the company.
- millstone 10y agoThe problem is that "outside of the company" can be murky. What if the company outsources? What if the company hires contractors? What if the company employs an intern - does the intern now have the right to distribute the software? These are the legal landmines that BigCos want to avoid, mainly because they're questions that have not really been decided.
- alexnewman 10y agoIt is not as murky as you think. Are you referring to any particular precedent?
- webmaven 10y agoThere are pretty simple As to these Q's. c
- Anderkent 10y agoIt's a very common company policy, because it's 'never use GPL' is a much easier rule to follow than 'only use GPL when it doesnt expose the company to risk'. Programmers aren't lawyers.
- dekhn 10y agoNo, GPL is fine. AGPL is not.
- yarrel 10y agoWhy?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sjwright 10y agoYou might be thinking of Lesser GPL? It should be immediately obvious why any Bigco would treat the AGPL like an exploding canister of infected blood and sharps. The AGPL treats web publishing as the same as binary distribution. If a bigco (e.g. Google) used AGPL code as part of a web service (e.g a web-based email client) there is a risk that they'd be required to comply with requests for source code. It's a pretty scary license. I wouldn't touch it... and I run a teeny tiny little speck of a website by comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License
- hvis 10y agoWhy would you use notty's code inside a web service?
- Godel_unicode 10y agoThis is the mindset that lead to people not realizing the impact of shellshock. If your webservice shells out to use any other tools (imagemagick for instance) the shell is now part of your app.
- dekhn 10y agoThat only addresses part of the reason for the policy. Please, you have to be aware the legal world and companies is very complicated, and smart people spend a lot of time analyzing this.
- oblio 10y agoWhile licenses are not simple, AGPL is specifically meant to "counter" closed source services based on AGPL code. So unless you want to offer Alacritty-as-a-Service, you should be just fine with the license.
- wpietri 10y agoThere's a big difference between "should be fine" and "will be fine". When the stakes are small, the former can be enough. But as the stakes get larger, people favor the latter. At a large company, the stakes get large in two ways. One is that all the numbers are just larger. But more important is that an individual decision maker's career success can become dependent on a relatively small number of things. E.g., if a lawyer approves a license that should be fine but actually isn't, that could substantially harm career prospects. It still may be a small problem overall for a major company, but if it means somebody gets fired, those are pretty big stakes.