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After much consideration we finally released our core software (https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect - a privacy & secu

After much consideration we finally released our core software (https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect https://github.com/kiprotect/kiprotect - a privacy & security engineering toolkit) under the AGPL. In the past we've released other software under more permissive licenses like the BSD-3 or MIT licenses, but we've decidedly picked the AGPL for our toolkit, for the following reasons: - We want to encourage people and organizations to use the software as a data processing & protection tool, just like they use other Linux/Unix tools. - Using the software does not require integrating it into a software project as a library (though you can do that). - We want to ensure that any extensions and modifications of the software (e.g. new anonymization or pseudonymization methods that people would implement) will make it back into the main software as open-source, so that everyone can benefit from them. - We want to keep potential competitors from being able to just resell our software as a SaaS offering or integrate it into a commercial, closed-source product. For me, the AGPL fits this bill quite nicely, and that it deters organizations to use the software for free in their closed-source projects is actually a bonus. We offer dual-licensing by the way, so organizations can just buy a commercial license if they want to integrate our tool into their closed-source software. That at least should allow us to refuse such a license to a potential competitor and the funding we (hopefully) will generate via the commercial licenses will help us fund the development for everyone. Win win.

CodesInChaos 6y ago
> - We want to ensure that any extensions and modifications of the software (will make it back into the main software as open-source, so that everyone can benefit from them. isn't that a contradiction with > We offer dual-licensing by the way since dual licensing requires every contributor to agree to a CLA and not merely contributing the code under the terms of the AGPL?
- ThePhysicist 6y ago
  Maybe, but I don't think so. In general we plan to have every contributor sign a CLA as we want to make sure we can keep control over the development of the project, in case we will have to change its license later. Some companies don't want to contribute back to open-source software and that's fine, if they pay a license fee instead we can use that money to pay ourselves and build new features for the open-source version, so everyone benefits. I'd even say that maybe open-source software is licensed too liberally these days. Right now for-profit companies make boatloads of money on the back of open-source software, without giving back much. I think if more projects were to use contagious licenses like the (A)GPL it might actually benefit the whole open-source ecosystem. Imagine what we could build if just 1-5 % of the largest companies would pay a small license fees for the open-source libraries they use.

CodesInChaos 6y ago

> - We want to ensure that any extensions and modifications of the software (will make it back into the main software as open-source, so that everyone can benefit from them. isn't that a contradiction with > We offer dual-licensing by the way since dual licensing requires every contributor to agree to a CLA and not merely contributing the code under the terms of the AGPL?

ThePhysicist 6y ago
Maybe, but I don't think so. In general we plan to have every contributor sign a CLA as we want to make sure we can keep control over the development of the project, in case we will have to change its license later. Some companies don't want to contribute back to open-source software and that's fine, if they pay a license fee instead we can use that money to pay ourselves and build new features for the open-source version, so everyone benefits. I'd even say that maybe open-source software is licensed too liberally these days. Right now for-profit companies make boatloads of money on the back of open-source software, without giving back much. I think if more projects were to use contagious licenses like the (A)GPL it might actually benefit the whole open-source ecosystem. Imagine what we could build if just 1-5 % of the largest companies would pay a small license fees for the open-source libraries they use.