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When we released our server product under GNU AGPL v3 license, we have received a rather negative reaction from other participants in our field. The general se

When we released our server product under GNU AGPL v3 license, we have received a rather negative reaction from other participants in our field. The general sentiment was, "this license makes a useless curiosity". I wonder where does this hostility come from. Jealosy? FUD? Frustration that they can't take the source and not share own improvements??

aidenn0 6y ago
No lawyer wants to be the first one to adopt licenses with novel clauses because the legal system runs on precedent, so using something that is untested in court is higher risk. It wasn't that long ago that no large company would touch the GPL with a 10 foot pole.
zokier 6y ago
The problem I have with AGPL is that you need to think about it, even if you just run the software and are not distributing it. Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. This is in stark contrast to all other mainstream licenses where in general you don't need to think about the license at all if you are not distributing the software, which makes very worry free experience.
- gpanders 6y ago
  > Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. No it does not. Using AGPL software does not suddenly make your own software a derived work.
  - djb_hackernews 6y ago
    Tell that to the lawyers who are paid lots of money to be risk adverse. As others point out, the law operates on precedent, no lawyer wants their decision to be the one that makes their employer a test piece.
  - zokier 6y ago
    If you run AGPL licensed software you must be prepared to distribute it to its users.
- pabs3 6y ago
  The source distribution requirement only kicks in if you modify the AGPLed software.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    Someone seems to have downvoted my comment without reading the AGPL.
    - pabs3 6y ago
      It is even mentioned in the introduction: "The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version." Here is the clause about modification: "13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License. Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph. Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
jchw 6y ago
The same reason some people dislike the GPL, but a bit more extreme. One of the cool things about open source is that you can go and use Open Source code for things that the original author may have never even thought of. So your implementation of some novel algorithm might end up being useful in some situation that you were not aware of or maybe did not even exist when you wrote the code. While it seems idealistic, it is not that uncommon. Now for the GPL license, depending on version, it is not a huge deal if you borrow GPL code. It is a fairly standard license that a lot of projects use. And of course GPL is compatible with a lot of different licenses, making it possible to distribute your projects under the terms of the GPL including code with compatible licensing. Something interesting to note is that AGPLv1 is not GPL compatible. AGPLv3 is not GPLv2 compatible. GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are compatible, since GPLv3 was written to intentionally allow this usage. (Note: IANAL or an expert; so this should be taken with a grain of salt.) In the end, this is why permissive licenses have gained a lot of popularity. It is immensely aggravating to people when things that are technically possible and not spiritually immoral are prevented by legal barriers that feel unnecessary. When the ZFS on Linux project faces trouble because of software licensing, it feels like a farce and a waste of time and resources. Now imagine that the reasoning for the license choices being incompatible was not to protect user rights, and not simply a matter of differing policies between different organizations and their open source releases, but rather transparently a ploy to protect a profit model. This is where people's aggravation turns to anger, because it then feels like the open source label is being used to pull people in, then the more restrictive licenses are being used to seek rent forever after. The reality is obviously not quite that grim. In fact, perhaps because of licenses like the Timescale license and SSPL, people have come around to AGPL in quite a significant way. The Overton window of open source licenses from corporate open source releases may have tilted a bit more towards the 'restrictive' side. I don't think there's anything actually immoral about protecting one's own profit model. It does, at least in some sense, dilute what it means for software to be open source; if AGPL becomes popular, it will be more likely to encumber more projects with its requirements. Of course, in many cases, the ownership of the copyright will be spread among multiple parties, and so everyone is on a level playing field, and so other than the burden of ensuring you adhere to the restriction there's no real reason to feel that it is 'unfair' anymore than copyleft licenses already are. At the end of the day, GPL was a legal solution to a community problem, and it imperfectly encodes an idea. There is no perfect encoding of that idea, so it is bound to cause some frustration for where the expectations mismatch with reality.
josephcsible 6y ago
The hostility comes from people who wanted to abuse the loophole that it closes, and/or from people who bought into their FUD.

aidenn0 6y ago

No lawyer wants to be the first one to adopt licenses with novel clauses because the legal system runs on precedent, so using something that is untested in court is higher risk. It wasn't that long ago that no large company would touch the GPL with a 10 foot pole.

zokier 6y ago

The problem I have with AGPL is that you need to think about it, even if you just run the software and are not distributing it. Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. This is in stark contrast to all other mainstream licenses where in general you don't need to think about the license at all if you are not distributing the software, which makes very worry free experience.

gpanders 6y ago
> Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. No it does not. Using AGPL software does not suddenly make your own software a derived work.
- djb_hackernews 6y ago
  Tell that to the lawyers who are paid lots of money to be risk adverse. As others point out, the law operates on precedent, no lawyer wants their decision to be the one that makes their employer a test piece.
- zokier 6y ago
  If you run AGPL licensed software you must be prepared to distribute it to its users.
pabs3 6y ago
The source distribution requirement only kicks in if you modify the AGPLed software.
- pabs3 6y ago
  Someone seems to have downvoted my comment without reading the AGPL.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    It is even mentioned in the introduction: "The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version." Here is the clause about modification: "13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License. Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph. Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

jchw 6y ago

The same reason some people dislike the GPL, but a bit more extreme. One of the cool things about open source is that you can go and use Open Source code for things that the original author may have never even thought of. So your implementation of some novel algorithm might end up being useful in some situation that you were not aware of or maybe did not even exist when you wrote the code. While it seems idealistic, it is not that uncommon. Now for the GPL license, depending on version, it is not a huge deal if you borrow GPL code. It is a fairly standard license that a lot of projects use. And of course GPL is compatible with a lot of different licenses, making it possible to distribute your projects under the terms of the GPL including code with compatible licensing. Something interesting to note is that AGPLv1 is not GPL compatible. AGPLv3 is not GPLv2 compatible. GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are compatible, since GPLv3 was written to intentionally allow this usage. (Note: IANAL or an expert; so this should be taken with a grain of salt.) In the end, this is why permissive licenses have gained a lot of popularity. It is immensely aggravating to people when things that are technically possible and not spiritually immoral are prevented by legal barriers that feel unnecessary. When the ZFS on Linux project faces trouble because of software licensing, it feels like a farce and a waste of time and resources. Now imagine that the reasoning for the license choices being incompatible was not to protect user rights, and not simply a matter of differing policies between different organizations and their open source releases, but rather transparently a ploy to protect a profit model. This is where people's aggravation turns to anger, because it then feels like the open source label is being used to pull people in, then the more restrictive licenses are being used to seek rent forever after. The reality is obviously not quite that grim. In fact, perhaps because of licenses like the Timescale license and SSPL, people have come around to AGPL in quite a significant way. The Overton window of open source licenses from corporate open source releases may have tilted a bit more towards the 'restrictive' side. I don't think there's anything actually immoral about protecting one's own profit model. It does, at least in some sense, dilute what it means for software to be open source; if AGPL becomes popular, it will be more likely to encumber more projects with its requirements. Of course, in many cases, the ownership of the copyright will be spread among multiple parties, and so everyone is on a level playing field, and so other than the burden of ensuring you adhere to the restriction there's no real reason to feel that it is 'unfair' anymore than copyleft licenses already are. At the end of the day, GPL was a legal solution to a community problem, and it imperfectly encodes an idea. There is no perfect encoding of that idea, so it is bound to cause some frustration for where the expectations mismatch with reality.

josephcsible 6y ago

The hostility comes from people who wanted to abuse the loophole that it closes, and/or from people who bought into their FUD.