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I don’t necessarily think AGPL is the best license, but I am very glad it’s AGPL catching on and not SSPL and friends. I’ve spoken my piece in recent threads al

by jchw 6y ago

I don’t necessarily think AGPL is the best license, but I am very glad it’s AGPL catching on and not SSPL and friends. I’ve spoken my piece in recent threads already, but I just think this is more friendly to the FOSS community even if it’s not perfect.

wegs2 6y ago
I don't think AGPL is a perfect license, but I do think it's the best. The flaws it has are things like the poorly-written patent clause, verbosity, ambiguity on concepts like linking, and general lack of elegance. It runs into a lot of corner cases around where code looks like data or data looks like code; there isn't a clean separation. GPLv2 was a brilliantly-drafted license. For all those failings, AGPL seems like the right choice for people who want their code feeding into an open ecosystem, rather than coopted by corporate giants.
- hda2 6y ago
  > The flaws it has are things like the poorly-written patent clause ... Isn't the AGPL based on the GPLv3? I thought the GPLv3 had a very clear stance on patents.
  - comex 6y ago
    There is an AGPLv2 and an AGPLv3, but most recent adopters are using AGPLv3.
    - hda2 6y ago
      Yes, and the AGPLv3 is based on GPLv3, a license that has a clear stance on patents.
- random5634 6y ago
  Except of course the corporate folks who are licensing under AGPL who can and do then take contributors code and make available a commercial version that no one else is allowed to make available. AGPL is a poison pill license that creates a very distorted open source model - better example is "shared source" - you can look but can't really use it in you own ops. The whole AGPLv3 / GPLv3 thing was such a mess - a big move towards trying to tell people how to use the code. I think long term GPLv3 and AGPLv3 die out.
  - jen20 6y ago
    > Except of course the corporate folks who are licensing under AGPL who can and do then take contributors code and make available a commercial version that no one else is allowed to make available. This is only true if there is a CLA, and contributors sign it.
    - random5634 6y ago
      The work around folks use is to claim just new stuff is agpl and skip contribs sign off. After stuff is mixed gets harder to pull apart. AWS just had to go through that exercise with elastic search
ksec 6y ago
It is interesting that the whole AGPL perception change in OSS and small business all thanks to Amazon. I guess we could now call AGPL as Amazon GPL. And last time I checked there doesn't seems to a A-LGPL or L-AGPL type of license.

by jchw 6y ago

wegs2 6y ago

I don't think AGPL is a perfect license, but I do think it's the best. The flaws it has are things like the poorly-written patent clause, verbosity, ambiguity on concepts like linking, and general lack of elegance. It runs into a lot of corner cases around where code looks like data or data looks like code; there isn't a clean separation. GPLv2 was a brilliantly-drafted license. For all those failings, AGPL seems like the right choice for people who want their code feeding into an open ecosystem, rather than coopted by corporate giants.

hda2 6y ago
> The flaws it has are things like the poorly-written patent clause ... Isn't the AGPL based on the GPLv3? I thought the GPLv3 had a very clear stance on patents.
- comex 6y ago
  There is an AGPLv2 and an AGPLv3, but most recent adopters are using AGPLv3.
  - hda2 6y ago
    Yes, and the AGPLv3 is based on GPLv3, a license that has a clear stance on patents.
random5634 6y ago
Except of course the corporate folks who are licensing under AGPL who can and do then take contributors code and make available a commercial version that no one else is allowed to make available. AGPL is a poison pill license that creates a very distorted open source model - better example is "shared source" - you can look but can't really use it in you own ops. The whole AGPLv3 / GPLv3 thing was such a mess - a big move towards trying to tell people how to use the code. I think long term GPLv3 and AGPLv3 die out.
- jen20 6y ago
  > Except of course the corporate folks who are licensing under AGPL who can and do then take contributors code and make available a commercial version that no one else is allowed to make available. This is only true if there is a CLA, and contributors sign it.
  - random5634 6y ago
    The work around folks use is to claim just new stuff is agpl and skip contribs sign off. After stuff is mixed gets harder to pull apart. AWS just had to go through that exercise with elastic search

ksec 6y ago

It is interesting that the whole AGPL perception change in OSS and small business all thanks to Amazon. I guess we could now call AGPL as Amazon GPL. And last time I checked there doesn't seems to a A-LGPL or L-AGPL type of license.