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While adding the problem that the AGPL is worded so poorly that no one knows where its virality stops (or even if copyright possibly can be bent so far enough t

While adding the problem that the AGPL is worded so poorly that no one knows where its virality stops (or even if copyright possibly can be bent so far enough that that virality is enforceable) and everyone is rightfully afraid of it until such time a court of law actually manages to make heads or tails of it and set a precedent. No company I'm aware of wants to be the guinea pig subject to those court costs, much less trying to explain to a judge technical implications of the license. (That includes companies using the AGPL; I've yet to hear of a compny willing to stake their companies on answering that second question of whether or not the virality of the license is legally enforceable in the confines of current understandings of copyright law.)

heavyset_go 6y ago
Sounds like a great opportunity for AGPL projects to offer commercial licenses to companies who are influenced by AGPL FUD.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  Depends whether you value money more than code contributions. I don’t think it would hurt to have AWS release some of their software, like the Nitro hypervisor. The world would probably benefit from that more than any license they’d have to pay.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  It's hard for me to dismiss what is the closest to a "Mutually Assured Destruction Pact" in software licenses as merely "FUD". Absolutely the commercial license business model is driven by that threat of "nuclear" retaliation. But that doesn't necessarily make that business model correct. (In some ways it seems rather skeevy, negotiating with someone that has an untested "nuclear device" and is threatening to use it.) Also, just because it is untested doesn't make it any less of a nuclear device. Einstein and Bohr and a few other mathematicians had a very good idea of what a nuclear bomb could do before one was ever built or tested. We can make, based on the (poor) wording of the AGPL, some pretty good assumptions about how badly it could be used in a court of law should someone actually try to call in their threatened strike. (Everyone is too afraid to let that happen, but should it happen, it may be devastating, and worse no one knows in which direction: if the AGPL will prove to be so virulent as to be toxic or if the AGPL will open questions about enforce-ability of copyleft clauses in what are ostensibly presented as copyright licenses that risk even the GPLv2 falling to a dangerous counter-precedent. Either way, a source for great damage to the software industry should the AGPL ever go to court.)
zerocrates 6y ago
I haven't looked at the AGPL in a long time; it is more viral than the normal GPL? My recollection was that the key difference is that "distribution" that triggers the requirement to share changes is expanded to include running it in a SaaS environment, but that's not really the part of the GPL that's "viral." Is there another difference, or what?
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  This gets into the long history of the GPL versus the LGPL and lots of legal battles in the text of those licenses and in the interpretation of the text in those licenses about the differences between types of "distribution" ("mere aggregation" versus "linking" versus "bundling" versus "inclusion"). In all but the "mere aggregation" case, the GPL is considered to be viral, and the LGPL relaxes that in some more "linking"/"bundling" scenarios. The AGPL to do its work has to close the "mere aggregation" "hole" in at least some cases, which alone makes it "more viral" on the spectrum of GPL licenses. That's before you get into problems with how the APGL defines "some cases", in that it doesn't do a great job so no one knows exactly how viral it is because it will take court cases to sort out its bad wording on the subject. (For instances: 1) The AGPL is intended to expand to include "running it in a SaaS environment" yet the way it (doesn't) define "SaaS environment" is so poor it could mean running it anywhere. 2) The AGPL was written by a PHP company and so a lot of the definitions, distinctions, and clauses from the GPL regarding the differences between binary and source distributions were struck out. Because most of the known legal definitions on "mere aggregation" with regards to the GPL hinge on those distinctions we have fewer and fewer ideas of what "mere aggregation" means with respect to the AGPL, and it again possibly implies that the AGPL's virality is potentially unbounded, that their "some cases" is intentionally or accidentally written as "all cases".)

heavyset_go 6y ago

Sounds like a great opportunity for AGPL projects to offer commercial licenses to companies who are influenced by AGPL FUD.

mr_toad 6y ago
Depends whether you value money more than code contributions. I don’t think it would hurt to have AWS release some of their software, like the Nitro hypervisor. The world would probably benefit from that more than any license they’d have to pay.
WorldMaker 6y ago
It's hard for me to dismiss what is the closest to a "Mutually Assured Destruction Pact" in software licenses as merely "FUD". Absolutely the commercial license business model is driven by that threat of "nuclear" retaliation. But that doesn't necessarily make that business model correct. (In some ways it seems rather skeevy, negotiating with someone that has an untested "nuclear device" and is threatening to use it.) Also, just because it is untested doesn't make it any less of a nuclear device. Einstein and Bohr and a few other mathematicians had a very good idea of what a nuclear bomb could do before one was ever built or tested. We can make, based on the (poor) wording of the AGPL, some pretty good assumptions about how badly it could be used in a court of law should someone actually try to call in their threatened strike. (Everyone is too afraid to let that happen, but should it happen, it may be devastating, and worse no one knows in which direction: if the AGPL will prove to be so virulent as to be toxic or if the AGPL will open questions about enforce-ability of copyleft clauses in what are ostensibly presented as copyright licenses that risk even the GPLv2 falling to a dangerous counter-precedent. Either way, a source for great damage to the software industry should the AGPL ever go to court.)

zerocrates 6y ago

I haven't looked at the AGPL in a long time; it is more viral than the normal GPL? My recollection was that the key difference is that "distribution" that triggers the requirement to share changes is expanded to include running it in a SaaS environment, but that's not really the part of the GPL that's "viral." Is there another difference, or what?

WorldMaker 6y ago
This gets into the long history of the GPL versus the LGPL and lots of legal battles in the text of those licenses and in the interpretation of the text in those licenses about the differences between types of "distribution" ("mere aggregation" versus "linking" versus "bundling" versus "inclusion"). In all but the "mere aggregation" case, the GPL is considered to be viral, and the LGPL relaxes that in some more "linking"/"bundling" scenarios. The AGPL to do its work has to close the "mere aggregation" "hole" in at least some cases, which alone makes it "more viral" on the spectrum of GPL licenses. That's before you get into problems with how the APGL defines "some cases", in that it doesn't do a great job so no one knows exactly how viral it is because it will take court cases to sort out its bad wording on the subject. (For instances: 1) The AGPL is intended to expand to include "running it in a SaaS environment" yet the way it (doesn't) define "SaaS environment" is so poor it could mean running it anywhere. 2) The AGPL was written by a PHP company and so a lot of the definitions, distinctions, and clauses from the GPL regarding the differences between binary and source distributions were struck out. Because most of the known legal definitions on "mere aggregation" with regards to the GPL hinge on those distinctions we have fewer and fewer ideas of what "mere aggregation" means with respect to the AGPL, and it again possibly implies that the AGPL's virality is potentially unbounded, that their "some cases" is intentionally or accidentally written as "all cases".)