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AGPL basically kills any commercial use of the code, which is where 95% of real breakthroughs happen.
by jiofih 6y ago
AGPL basically kills any commercial use of the code, which is where 95% of real breakthroughs happen.
- capableweb 6y ago> 95% of real breakthroughs happen Is it? What hat are you pulling this number from? You don't have to search for very long before you realize how much government-funded research and code has improved our life. Department of Energy labs, National Science Foundation, DARPA, Apollo Space Program, Human Genome Project and more are all publicly funded and responsible for some of the biggest "real breakthroughs" in human history, and that's just projects from the US.
- mark-r 6y agoDidn't you know that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot?
- a1369209993 6y agoActually, it's 97% - I think you're confusing it with the similar but unrelated quote by Abraham Lincoln: "85% of quotes on the internet are made up.".
- mark-r 6y agoNow I know you're making that up. The internet didn't even exist until Al Gore invented it!
- berkut 6y agoI suspect there's not always a complete separation of "government-funded" vs "commercial" labels, especially in the case of things like Apollo and DARPA, where defence contractors essentially work as commercial companies on contracts for the US government / NASA, so it's not completely black and white in that area.
- pheug 6y agoBig tech companies like Google and Facebook avoid touching AGPL software with a ten foot pole. Choosing AGPL is a great way to isolate yourself from any collaboration with that community
- Lammy 6y agoYes, that's exactly the point. I don't want those people around my codebase. Nobody on a Crusade to get you to adopt ProtoBuffers or Thrift. No codes of conduct. No risk of getting abandoned when priorities shift (like HHVM dropping support for PHP code). Heaven! I love software again :D
- jiofih 6y agoI don’t mean that kind of humanity-defining breakthroughs, but the kind that depend on OSS libraries - new social, entertainment, commerce and productivity tools that change our lives incrementally.
- Lammy 6y agoAGPL basically kills any commercial use of the code Yeah, that's right :)
- pietrovismara 6y agoThat's the whole point after all, amirite?
- pietrovismara 6y ago>commercial use of the code, which is where 95% of real breakthroughs happen. I don't believe this at all. Data to back your statement?
- jka 6y agoWhat would happen to a commercial software breakthrough if it was licensed using AGPL?
- enriquto 6y agoWhy are you asking it hypothetically? We have many examples of that. For example, Overleaf (the online LaTeX editor) is a service based on AGPL code for which my lab pays a significant amount of money each month.
- jka 6y agoBecause I'm curious what the mindset behind "AGPL doesn't work for commercial environments" is. It's a common, recurring statement and I'm sure people have good reasons to believe it. I can guess what that thinking might be, but there's no substitute for asking.
- enriquto 6y agoYou have a list of AGPL-licensed software here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_under_the_GNU_AGPL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_under_the_GNU... The list is not at all up to date, and very incomplete, but it's better than nothing. You can see that there's quite a few well-known infrastructure projects there.
- JoshTriplett 6y agoThe point of the AGPL is to prevent certain usage. If you want companies to consider paying you for an alternative license, the first step is choosing an Open Source license that they're not thrilled with.
- devit 6y agoIf the author is the sole contributor or asks contributors for copyright assignments, then they can offer a paid license as well for "commercial use".