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Some of these licenses are like kryptonite for enterprises. For example, I once wrote an ip address manager in python and licensed it AGPLv3. Two companies re
by nimbius 8y ago
Some of these licenses are like kryptonite for enterprises. For example, I once wrote an ip address manager in python and licensed it AGPLv3. Two companies reached out to me through Github not to talk about features or bugs, but to demand I change the license to BSD. after a dozen or so random bug reports insisting I had no right to use AGPL, AGPL was not a real license, and even a handful of Outlook meeting invites copied and pasted to me for a face-to-face negotiation of new licensing terms, I eventually deleted the repo.
- JoshTriplett 8y agoSounds like the license did its job quite nicely. If those companies cared enough to negotiate new license terms, they could pay you for such a license.
- Avamander 8y agoIt's not only companies who ask for license changes, Google and other employees ask licences to be changes too simply because the corporation they work for forbids even looking at the source otherwise. For example: https://github.com/pebble-dev/rebblestore-api/pull/31 https://github.com/pebble-dev/rebblestore-api/pull/31
- teddyh 8y agoIn my view, that’s more an unexpected feature. I can give people freedom to do what they need to do with the software I write, at the same time as I can, in effect, prevent Google from even reading it? Sign me up!
- vonmoltke 8y agoThat is what the commenter claims, but the link provided for support refers only to submitting patches that cover work Google owns. I found nothing about a prohibition on reading code, not a prohibition on using those licenses for personal projects.
- DannyBee 8y agoThis is false for Google (I created and owned the relevant policies). Google publishes it's open source docs, so you can just look: https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl-policy/ https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl-policy/ We also banned patching agpl projects, I'm just too lazy to find that link for you.
- Avamander 8y agoCan you please share why patching is forbidden for AGPL? To avoid what?
- megaman22 8y agoGPL is kryptonite if you want anybody outside a narrow slice of developers to use or care about your work. Unless idealogical purity trumps practicality in your mind, it's a nonstarter. NPM or Nuget under more restrictive license regimes would never get off the ground.
- quadrangle 8y agoThe hyperbole in this comment is unwarranted. Furthermore, the GPL isn't even developer-focused. It's downstream, end-user focused. There's a reason many of the most prominent free/libre/open programs are GPL: GIMP, Audacity, Linux kernel, so many others… GPL for developer-focused libraries and tools etc. is where the tension comes in because so many developers want to benefit from the open resources but not pass on the freedoms downstream.
- megaman22 8y agoWell, I'm a developer, and I'm looking at this from the perspective of my upstream dependencies. If your cool library to do xyz is GPL, that means my project that wants to use your library needs to be GPL. If it's MIT or Apache or MSPL, party on. under most CyA lawyer regimes.
- abritinthebay 8y agoWhich is why LGPL exists.
- megaman22 8y agoLGPL is problematic to some extent outside the original C-ist style of static and dynamic link libraries. At least that's what I've been told.
- rectang 8y agoThe Apache Software Foundation doesn't allow LGPL dependencies for one because the LGPL stipulation that it must be possible to replace the LGPL component imposes a requirement which is not present in the ALv2 -- thus the the ALv2 cannot subsume the LGPL and a bundled package including the LGPL dependency cannot be distributed as ALv2. This is a policy issue, not a legal one. Such a package would still be legal to distribute, but it would not meet the ASF policy that all ASF products be distributed under the ALv2.
- jcelerier 8y agoI put all my personal projects as AGPLv3 and thankfully never had this problem