4 ms·

No. It's not a requirement on users anymore than the GPL requiring you to distribute corresponding source on CDs was a requirement on users. Morally and legall

No. It's not a requirement on users anymore than the GPL requiring you to distribute corresponding source on CDs was a requirement on users. Morally and legally, the distribution medium does not make a difference. When you make the software available over the network you are no longer the user -- the users of the software over the network are the users. When you convey the software over the network you are a network operator and a distributor. Being a network operator and a distributor imposes obligations upon you. It is not a EULA. The AGPL even says, in the same section that the GPL says (to wit, section 9) that you don't need to accept it in order to be granted its rights.

marcan_42 6y ago
You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between network usage and distribution. If I give you a CD with nginx, I'm distributing it. If I send you a .tar.gz with nginx, I'm distributing it. If I bring up nginx on a server, put some HTML files in the webroot, and give you a URL to it, I am not distributing nginx. I am merely using nginx, and offering you a service using nginx. I am not offering nginx itself. I am distributing my HTML website, and I am merely using nginx for it. Cases 1 and 2 invoke copyright. Case 3 does not. In the absence of a license, you are not allowed to do 1 nor 2, but you are allowed to do 3. I can give you software I created, say nothing whatsoever about its license (which means, implicitly, "all rights reserved"), and international copyright law says you can not do 1 nor 2, but you can do 3. The GPL, BSD, and other free software copyright licenses say you can do 1 or 2, under certain conditions. The AGPL, and other EULAs, says you can NOT do 3, unless you meet certain conditions (other EULAs may, for example, limit the number of users, which would be typical for typical proprietary software server EULAs; the AGPL limits how you can serve the software, in that you must provide source changes to users of the service). Therefore, the GPL and BSD strictly grant rights (to copy). The AGPL both grants rights to copy and restricts rights to use. It is therefore not a copyright license, but a contract, an EULA, a click-through usage agreement. And anyone who treats it as a copyright license (i.e. users are not expected to care) is doing a disservice to their users, because they are, in fact, not allowed to use the software without abiding by that contract (license). If nginx were AGPL-licensed (thankfully it isn't), and I made a change to the source for personal use, then the AGPL would require me to stick a download link to that modified source in the footer of every website served using that copy of nginx, even if I am not serving the nginx binary itself. The GPL is already perfectly suited to cover distributing software on the internet, as tarballs or whatever. The GPLv2 had some outdated provisions referencing a "medium" and written offers (e.g. the CD story), and the GPLv3 already covered that by saying you can just send the source via the same medium as the binary, e.g. from a network server. The AGPL is a very different beast, and it has nothing to do with updating the GPL to allow for network transmission of the source, as you seem to imply. Have an example: I run a Nextcloud instance for personal use. It is AGPL-licensed. Thankfully I have not made any changes to the code. However, if I touch a single php file in my /var/www/nextcloud (other than config files - hopefully, the AGPL is too vague to say for sure), that means I now need to figure out how to package and distribute that change to literally every visitor to my instance, which could be anyone on the internet (even if they just hit the login page). This is NOT possible with a purely copyright license. And my distribution did not warn me about it (like they did for proprietary software EULAs, which require an explicit ack), because they erroneously believe that the AGPL is not an EULA, because the FSF wrote it. Does this make sense now?
- imtringued 6y ago
  >If nginx were AGPL-licensed (thankfully it isn't), and I made a change to the source for personal use, then the AGPL would require me to stick a download link to that modified source in the footer of every website served using that copy of nginx, even if I am not serving the nginx binary itself. People add links to the source code because it's much less work than responding to emails. It's entirely voluntary. Users have a right to the source code of AGPL software you make accessible to them and you can satisfy that constraint any way you see fit.
  - marcan_42 6y ago
    You haven't read the license, have you? :-) > your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network [...] an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge [...] An email does not cut it. It has to be a direct link to the source, or some kind of equivalent mechanism to directly download it from a server. Merely providing you the opportunity to ask a human for it does not cut it (an email bot might, but that'd be dumb).
- belorn 6y ago
  This kind of sillyness of calling AGPL a contract is incorrect because it assumes that copyright law only care about distribution. It does not. It is an copyright offence to perform any of the following acts without permission of the owner: Copy the work. Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public. Perform, broadcast or show the work in public. *Adapt the work.* A person who take a copyrighted software and adapts it into a online service need to get adaptation permission from the author. If the work is given out under a AGPL license then that license is proof of permission as long as the person follow the terms, just as with any other copyright license. You do not need permissions from a copyright license unless the action a person does falls within the scope of copyright. If a person don't copy, rent, lend, issue copies, perform, broadcast, show, or adapt the work, then the AGPL conditions are irrelevant because the user do not need permission in the first place. An EULA or contract however is not limited in this way and can restrict usage of a program outside the scope of copyright.

marcan_42 6y ago

You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between network usage and distribution. If I give you a CD with nginx, I'm distributing it. If I send you a .tar.gz with nginx, I'm distributing it. If I bring up nginx on a server, put some HTML files in the webroot, and give you a URL to it, I am not distributing nginx. I am merely using nginx, and offering you a service using nginx. I am not offering nginx itself. I am distributing my HTML website, and I am merely using nginx for it. Cases 1 and 2 invoke copyright. Case 3 does not. In the absence of a license, you are not allowed to do 1 nor 2, but you are allowed to do 3. I can give you software I created, say nothing whatsoever about its license (which means, implicitly, "all rights reserved"), and international copyright law says you can not do 1 nor 2, but you can do 3. The GPL, BSD, and other free software copyright licenses say you can do 1 or 2, under certain conditions. The AGPL, and other EULAs, says you can NOT do 3, unless you meet certain conditions (other EULAs may, for example, limit the number of users, which would be typical for typical proprietary software server EULAs; the AGPL limits how you can serve the software, in that you must provide source changes to users of the service). Therefore, the GPL and BSD strictly grant rights (to copy). The AGPL both grants rights to copy and restricts rights to use. It is therefore not a copyright license, but a contract, an EULA, a click-through usage agreement. And anyone who treats it as a copyright license (i.e. users are not expected to care) is doing a disservice to their users, because they are, in fact, not allowed to use the software without abiding by that contract (license). If nginx were AGPL-licensed (thankfully it isn't), and I made a change to the source for personal use, then the AGPL would require me to stick a download link to that modified source in the footer of every website served using that copy of nginx, even if I am not serving the nginx binary itself. The GPL is already perfectly suited to cover distributing software on the internet, as tarballs or whatever. The GPLv2 had some outdated provisions referencing a "medium" and written offers (e.g. the CD story), and the GPLv3 already covered that by saying you can just send the source via the same medium as the binary, e.g. from a network server. The AGPL is a very different beast, and it has nothing to do with updating the GPL to allow for network transmission of the source, as you seem to imply. Have an example: I run a Nextcloud instance for personal use. It is AGPL-licensed. Thankfully I have not made any changes to the code. However, if I touch a single php file in my /var/www/nextcloud (other than config files - hopefully, the AGPL is too vague to say for sure), that means I now need to figure out how to package and distribute that change to literally every visitor to my instance, which could be anyone on the internet (even if they just hit the login page). This is NOT possible with a purely copyright license. And my distribution did not warn me about it (like they did for proprietary software EULAs, which require an explicit ack), because they erroneously believe that the AGPL is not an EULA, because the FSF wrote it. Does this make sense now?

imtringued 6y ago
>If nginx were AGPL-licensed (thankfully it isn't), and I made a change to the source for personal use, then the AGPL would require me to stick a download link to that modified source in the footer of every website served using that copy of nginx, even if I am not serving the nginx binary itself. People add links to the source code because it's much less work than responding to emails. It's entirely voluntary. Users have a right to the source code of AGPL software you make accessible to them and you can satisfy that constraint any way you see fit.
- marcan_42 6y ago
  You haven't read the license, have you? :-) > your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network [...] an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge [...] An email does not cut it. It has to be a direct link to the source, or some kind of equivalent mechanism to directly download it from a server. Merely providing you the opportunity to ask a human for it does not cut it (an email bot might, but that'd be dumb).
belorn 6y ago
This kind of sillyness of calling AGPL a contract is incorrect because it assumes that copyright law only care about distribution. It does not. It is an copyright offence to perform any of the following acts without permission of the owner: Copy the work. Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public. Perform, broadcast or show the work in public. *Adapt the work.* A person who take a copyrighted software and adapts it into a online service need to get adaptation permission from the author. If the work is given out under a AGPL license then that license is proof of permission as long as the person follow the terms, just as with any other copyright license. You do not need permissions from a copyright license unless the action a person does falls within the scope of copyright. If a person don't copy, rent, lend, issue copies, perform, broadcast, show, or adapt the work, then the AGPL conditions are irrelevant because the user do not need permission in the first place. An EULA or contract however is not limited in this way and can restrict usage of a program outside the scope of copyright.