4 ms·
Awesome article! I was in an organization which had an AGPL ban. After a couple of months with lawyers, it's now a major AGPL supporter. AGPL lets you build eco
by woofie11 6y ago
Awesome article! I was in an organization which had an AGPL ban. After a couple of months with lawyers, it's now a major AGPL supporter. AGPL lets you build ecosystems around your software, where everyone contributes, and no one can parasitically compete with you. It's absolutely the right tool for a lot of uses.
I'm no longer with the organization, but it had:
* Hundreds of open-source contributors
* Millions of users, mostly paying
* Zero direct competitors using the software. With equal ground for technology, it'd be almost impossible to overcome first-mover and branding advantage unless the organization really messed up
* Hundreds of major open source users doing interesting things with the software and using it in non-competing contexts. That translated into product enhancements.
With GPL or BSD, it almost certainly would have played out as lots of competitors doing an extend-and-proprietize, and instead of a successful open company, it would have been a dead organization.
So many misconceptions abound.
The flip side, though, isn't that everyone should use the AGPL. You should have the right license for the right context.
- hpfr 6y agoAnyone have guesses to the organization here, since they’re pointedly not mentioning it? I find that a bit confusing since their code is probably publicly available under the AGPL, which is really all this comment discusses.
- debiandev 6y ago> After a couple of months with lawyers, it's now a major AGPL supporter I had a similar experience. I took exams on patent and copyright law with IP lawyers as teachers during my degree. Then I worked in well known tech companies and had the opportunity to attend meetings with lawyers, business people, read contracts, etc. and oh boy! Misconceptions abound terribly. The average techie overestimates his/her understanding of law and business. "permissive" licenses are stupidly lenient. Companies never sign similar contracts between each other when exchanging goods or services. Contracts have hundreds of defensive clauses to mitigate risks or ensure fairness.
- oefrha 6y agoI find this comment puzzling. You're arguing from an IP owner's perspective. Whether you support using AGPL for your own software is completely orthogonal to whether you should use someone else's AGPL code in your proprietary product (assuming being proprietary is a done decision). (Btw, one can argue that you have a vested interest in strengthening AGPL so that other companies would more readily choose your AGPL software and then be locked in to your ecosystem, so you're knowingly minimizing the associated risks on this thread. You see what I did there? Yeah, attack on your integrity based on speculations, exactly like TFA.)
- cycloptic 6y agoThe simple solution there is to not make a proprietary product to begin with. Sorry, not trying to be snarky, but that (among other things) is the price you pay for that decision. It's baffling to me how some companies are so resistant to having to conduct legal reviews to use open source, which in a lot of cases will directly make them money, but at the same time these companies will gladly wave a giant NDA at someone just to start a negotiation.
- kube-system 6y agoIt's not always a choice. There are people who cannot open source their software due to other legal, organizational, or practical factors.
- cycloptic 6y agoThat is still a choice. It may just be that your boss is ignoring your input and making the choice for you, which is a different problem.
- kube-system 6y agoNo, there are plenty of circumstances where there laws and/or contractual obligations other than software licenses become involved in software development which can conflict. See healthcare, government, finance, regulated industries, etc.