Interfacing to a program over a network is not an act of copying, thus not controlled by copyright. Therefore, attempting to control such usage falls out of the

Interfacing to a program over a network is not an act of copying, thus not controlled by copyright. Therefore, attempting to control such usage falls out of the category of copyright licenses (which the GPL is) and into the realm of EULAs (think "you may use this software with at most two network users" - same story). I used to think the AGPL was an EULA based on an interpretation biased by how people think the AGPL works. Upon looking into this more closely, I've realized this is most likely not the correct interpretation. Instead, my current opinion is that the AGPL is just a terrible copyright license that is almost impossible to comply with (most AGPLed projects without copyright assignment violate their own license - if you think this doesn't make sense, what I mean is every contributor violates every other contributor's copyright), while not actually protecting against proprietary SaaSification in any legally enforceable way. I could go into more details, but honestly I've told this story one time too many, so I'll just encourage people to read clause 13, word for word, carefully, and think about what it actually means, not what the FSF has convinced everyone it means.