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Google’s allergic to copyleft licenses, so that’s about what I’d expect. But smaller software companies, consider this a sign: want to be FOSS but don’t want th

Google’s allergic to copyleft licenses, so that’s about what I’d expect. But smaller software companies, consider this a sign: want to be FOSS but don’t want the tech giants to swallow your business? Go AGPL, they’ll avoid it like the plague.

niftich 7y ago
Instead, once your product grows popular enough, they'll just offer a managed, hosted service with a compatible API.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Yeah, but they'd do that regardless, so AGPL is the least-sucky option.
- imtringued 7y ago
  As long as they contribute their changes back that is perfectly okay.
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  Well, while the current status of Oracle v. Google (APIs being copyrightable) is a disaster for the software industry, if you can't beat 'em... AGPL APIs, anyone?
tony 7y ago
> want to be FOSS but don’t want the tech giants to swallow your business? I get the aesthetic and sentiment, but in practice this doesn't convey the reality. Having a business link or incorporate your open source software project isn't necessarily bad. At the very least, it's a social proof. There could be sponsorships, patches sent back. There plenty examples of permissively licensed software out there that directly contradict this: FreeBSD for Nintendo Switch and PS4, FreeNAS Django, TypeScript, Jupyter. VSCode. Electron. Python. Ruby. CoreCLR. Windows Terminal. Anyone of these projects, someone could fork it, rename it, repackage it as value added. It doesn't happen since the transaction incentivizes merging contributions upstream - maintaining forked code has passive costs. Pushing it back passes the burden (and also the benefit) of the changes back to the project. > Go AGPL, they’ll avoid it like the plague. I feel when we're thinking about gatekeeping who and uses our software and why, we're not really doing open source anymore. In that case, writing commercial software license from scratch, or based off a permissively licensed project, and not releasing the source is an option.
- djaque 7y ago
  I license all of my software AGPL and the reason I do it isn't gatekeeping or some theoretical argument about what software is. It's because I have put a large amount of effort into this product and decided to release it for the benefit of the community. I would feel taken advantage of if a company came in and hoarded that software while making a profit off of it and never giving back. The free market is great and all, but it's also OK to just ask that people give you a fair deal when they use your code.
  - beefhash 7y ago
    > and decided to release it for the benefit of the community I don't understand. You're saying “for the benefit of the community”, but then only speak about companies as negative examples. (1) Are companies inherently incapable of being members of the community to you? (2) Are people whose software is more liberally licensed (and may wish to incorporate parts of yours) not part of the community to you?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Presumably companies who are not willing to give back to the community are not part of the community for them, nor are people who enable people who do not give back to the community part of the community (in certain cases). (The community, of course, being "people who are willing to keep their work available to all other members of the community".)
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      OP clearly said > never giving back AGPL allows companies to use the product, while also guaranteeing that they contribute back. And community = entities who contribute back.
      - kazinator 7y ago
        The AGPL is about the operator of software not being legally allowed to hide nefarious code on their servers that harms users. The problem is that if you're a big enough monopolist prooviding some online service that people have to use, you can do that in the open. You just comply with the AGPL and reveal all the code that tracks users or discriminates or whatever Bad Stuff. At the end of the day, the code is still running, and vast numbers of users are still logging in. Basically, the AGPL has no real teeth; it gives the users no real control over the program they are using, only some visibility into it. Nefarious behavior can be hidden in configurations, not just code. And in other services. Like suppose a server program, at some point in its execution, makes a HTTPS request to another server. The URL, including parameters and an POST data, are driven by data from a configuration database. Oops! Who knows what the heck that is doing? But, hey, if you want to run such a thing on your own machine, here is the source code.
fabianhjr 7y ago
I think AGPL is neither clear enough nor restrictive enough. Fortunatly some amazing people have been working on a stronger copyleft license (https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity) and a soft-copyleft non-commercial license (https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity)
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Fortunatly some amazing people have been working on a stronger copyleft license (https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity) How so?
  - fabianhjr 7y ago
    > Contribute software you develop, operate, or analyze with this software, including changes or additions to this software.
EGreg 7y ago
That’s the advice I got from Stallman’s (or FSF) lawyer. The same guy who inspired Diaspora guys. Forgot his name. In between ranting at me for about an hour he did give me that useful piece of info. The only thing I asked him. Quite a character, that guy.
kazinator 7y ago
In this case, Google is just being allergic to a non-free license. It's no different from not being allowed to check into Google's monorepo something with an IBM copyright on it, without any wording about free redistribution and use.
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  AGPL licensing denotes Free Software. It is too free for Google.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    AGPL carries conditions on the use of the software, not only redistribution. It cannot be called free by any stretch of the imagination; though obviously some people in the GNU project and the FSF feel they have that stretch.
rstuart4133 7y ago
I use the AGPL myself, and over the decades become obvious both it and the GPL have a flaw: they don't define when their most contentious aspect (them being "viral"), is triggered, so most of the time it's a hope and a prayer. I have no doubt Stallman thought the term "derived work" was pretty clear at the time, but the amount of wriggle room it provides in the hands of the wrong people this could be devastating to business. (Think: Oracle trying to stretch the definition of copyright to cover API's.) The occasional rare project does go out of its way to define the demarcation line. For example, the kernel's authors have made it very clear the demarcation line is the user space API, so anything that relies on it is not considered a derived work. I have no doubt that is one of the reasons you find the linux kernel everywhere. But even some top tier GNU projects have similarly clear lines: not only are programs complied with the GCC not considered derived works, programs that statically link the libraries needed by the GCC compiled code are not considered derived either. And so unsurprisingly, using the GCC is not considered dangerous, despite it being GPL. Personally, I'd like to see an [A]GPLv4, that formally defines what is a "derivative work" is or at least provide a list of choices users could include. It could, for example, exclude programs that use output of another when that output is intended to be readable by humans, and it could exclude header files and similar things that define API's. Doing that would remove a lot of the uncertainty about when the GPL is "viral" and when it isn't. As it stands, Google's blanket ban seems like a reasonable response.

niftich 7y ago

Instead, once your product grows popular enough, they'll just offer a managed, hosted service with a compatible API.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
Yeah, but they'd do that regardless, so AGPL is the least-sucky option.
imtringued 7y ago
As long as they contribute their changes back that is perfectly okay.
ryukafalz 7y ago
Well, while the current status of Oracle v. Google (APIs being copyrightable) is a disaster for the software industry, if you can't beat 'em... AGPL APIs, anyone?

tony 7y ago

> want to be FOSS but don’t want the tech giants to swallow your business? I get the aesthetic and sentiment, but in practice this doesn't convey the reality. Having a business link or incorporate your open source software project isn't necessarily bad. At the very least, it's a social proof. There could be sponsorships, patches sent back. There plenty examples of permissively licensed software out there that directly contradict this: FreeBSD for Nintendo Switch and PS4, FreeNAS Django, TypeScript, Jupyter. VSCode. Electron. Python. Ruby. CoreCLR. Windows Terminal. Anyone of these projects, someone could fork it, rename it, repackage it as value added. It doesn't happen since the transaction incentivizes merging contributions upstream - maintaining forked code has passive costs. Pushing it back passes the burden (and also the benefit) of the changes back to the project. > Go AGPL, they’ll avoid it like the plague. I feel when we're thinking about gatekeeping who and uses our software and why, we're not really doing open source anymore. In that case, writing commercial software license from scratch, or based off a permissively licensed project, and not releasing the source is an option.

djaque 7y ago
I license all of my software AGPL and the reason I do it isn't gatekeeping or some theoretical argument about what software is. It's because I have put a large amount of effort into this product and decided to release it for the benefit of the community. I would feel taken advantage of if a company came in and hoarded that software while making a profit off of it and never giving back. The free market is great and all, but it's also OK to just ask that people give you a fair deal when they use your code.
- beefhash 7y ago
  > and decided to release it for the benefit of the community I don't understand. You're saying “for the benefit of the community”, but then only speak about companies as negative examples. (1) Are companies inherently incapable of being members of the community to you? (2) Are people whose software is more liberally licensed (and may wish to incorporate parts of yours) not part of the community to you?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Presumably companies who are not willing to give back to the community are not part of the community for them, nor are people who enable people who do not give back to the community part of the community (in certain cases). (The community, of course, being "people who are willing to keep their work available to all other members of the community".)
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    OP clearly said > never giving back AGPL allows companies to use the product, while also guaranteeing that they contribute back. And community = entities who contribute back.
    - kazinator 7y ago
      The AGPL is about the operator of software not being legally allowed to hide nefarious code on their servers that harms users. The problem is that if you're a big enough monopolist prooviding some online service that people have to use, you can do that in the open. You just comply with the AGPL and reveal all the code that tracks users or discriminates or whatever Bad Stuff. At the end of the day, the code is still running, and vast numbers of users are still logging in. Basically, the AGPL has no real teeth; it gives the users no real control over the program they are using, only some visibility into it. Nefarious behavior can be hidden in configurations, not just code. And in other services. Like suppose a server program, at some point in its execution, makes a HTTPS request to another server. The URL, including parameters and an POST data, are driven by data from a configuration database. Oops! Who knows what the heck that is doing? But, hey, if you want to run such a thing on your own machine, here is the source code.

fabianhjr 7y ago

I think AGPL is neither clear enough nor restrictive enough. Fortunatly some amazing people have been working on a stronger copyleft license (https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity) and a soft-copyleft non-commercial license (https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity)

saagarjha 7y ago
> Fortunatly some amazing people have been working on a stronger copyleft license (https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity) How so?
- fabianhjr 7y ago
  > Contribute software you develop, operate, or analyze with this software, including changes or additions to this software.

EGreg 7y ago

That’s the advice I got from Stallman’s (or FSF) lawyer. The same guy who inspired Diaspora guys. Forgot his name. In between ranting at me for about an hour he did give me that useful piece of info. The only thing I asked him. Quite a character, that guy.

kazinator 7y ago

In this case, Google is just being allergic to a non-free license. It's no different from not being allowed to check into Google's monorepo something with an IBM copyright on it, without any wording about free redistribution and use.

lidHanteyk 7y ago
AGPL licensing denotes Free Software. It is too free for Google.
- kazinator 7y ago
  AGPL carries conditions on the use of the software, not only redistribution. It cannot be called free by any stretch of the imagination; though obviously some people in the GNU project and the FSF feel they have that stretch.

rstuart4133 7y ago

I use the AGPL myself, and over the decades become obvious both it and the GPL have a flaw: they don't define when their most contentious aspect (them being "viral"), is triggered, so most of the time it's a hope and a prayer. I have no doubt Stallman thought the term "derived work" was pretty clear at the time, but the amount of wriggle room it provides in the hands of the wrong people this could be devastating to business. (Think: Oracle trying to stretch the definition of copyright to cover API's.) The occasional rare project does go out of its way to define the demarcation line. For example, the kernel's authors have made it very clear the demarcation line is the user space API, so anything that relies on it is not considered a derived work. I have no doubt that is one of the reasons you find the linux kernel everywhere. But even some top tier GNU projects have similarly clear lines: not only are programs complied with the GCC not considered derived works, programs that statically link the libraries needed by the GCC compiled code are not considered derived either. And so unsurprisingly, using the GCC is not considered dangerous, despite it being GPL. Personally, I'd like to see an [A]GPLv4, that formally defines what is a "derivative work" is or at least provide a list of choices users could include. It could, for example, exclude programs that use output of another when that output is intended to be readable by humans, and it could exclude header files and similar things that define API's. Doing that would remove a lot of the uncertainty about when the GPL is "viral" and when it isn't. As it stands, Google's blanket ban seems like a reasonable response.