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My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it. GitHub wouldn't necessa

My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it. GitHub wouldn't necessarily have needed to change it to include it in a data set, so I'm not sure there's a license violation. However the gray area is that the massive data set of which it is a part will spit out new code that has, in some way big or small, been influence by the AGPL code, which... well, I don't think that sort of use was anticipated by the terms of AGPL. I see can reasonable arguments in both directions. Personally though, I would favor an interpretation that limits GitHub's use for commercial purposes, if not for strictly licensing restrictions then at least for the spirit of these licenses. In truth, I would very much have liked GitHub to gone out big & loud with an aggressive awareness campaign asking repo owner to opt-in to the use of their code for this. Again, for pure opens source licenses I don't thing that would be required, but I still think it would be the right thing to do. And certainly less damaging to their reputation & future hesitancy for project maintainers to trust GitHub with their code. I don't think this will be a tipping point by itself, but if this behavioral pattern continues I could imagine devs big & small shifting to hosted or on-prem instances of things like GitLab.

hvis 5y ago
> My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it. When you combine some [A]GPL code with said commercial project, you create a derivative work. And that work has to be compatible with [A]GPL's conditions as well. Which is usually not great for a commercial (closed-source) project.
jraph 5y ago
> My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it Any restriction imposed by the GPL is also true for the AGPL. In particular, if you reuse some code from a (A)GPL project, even if you don't change the code, you must release your whole project under this license too, and give attribution to the author. For the LGPL, the same thing applies, except you can reuse LGPL code in your code without releasing it under a *GPL license if someone can replace this code at execution time by another code (static linking does not allow this).
- ineedasername 5y ago
  But AGPL & LGPL still don't prohibit commercial use do they? They impose obligations on those using the code to--potentially-- release their own code, but commercial use in & of itself isn't prohbited. Again, I think GitHub is going against the spirit of these licenses and should behave differently. What I'm trying to do in this discussion is simply explore the limitations within the letter of the license. Basically the boundary between being legal, and being legal but still wrong in some other sense. Consider it my exploration of the ethical constraints vs. legal constraints.
  - jraph 5y ago
    You can use GPL code commercially, as long as you release what needs to be released as GPL for the AGPL, that's probably your entire codebase. You cannot use AGPL code in non-AGPL codebase or as a library in a non-AGPL. Same for LGPL, except you can use LGPL code as a dynamic library in a non-GPL codebase, as long as you redistribute modifications to the LGPL code. You can sell *GPL software or services around it.

hvis 5y ago

> My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it. When you combine some [A]GPL code with said commercial project, you create a derivative work. And that work has to be compatible with [A]GPL's conditions as well. Which is usually not great for a commercial (closed-source) project.

jraph 5y ago

> My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it Any restriction imposed by the GPL is also true for the AGPL. In particular, if you reuse some code from a (A)GPL project, even if you don't change the code, you must release your whole project under this license too, and give attribution to the author. For the LGPL, the same thing applies, except you can reuse LGPL code in your code without releasing it under a *GPL license if someone can replace this code at execution time by another code (static linking does not allow this).

ineedasername 5y ago
But AGPL & LGPL still don't prohibit commercial use do they? They impose obligations on those using the code to--potentially-- release their own code, but commercial use in & of itself isn't prohbited. Again, I think GitHub is going against the spirit of these licenses and should behave differently. What I'm trying to do in this discussion is simply explore the limitations within the letter of the license. Basically the boundary between being legal, and being legal but still wrong in some other sense. Consider it my exploration of the ethical constraints vs. legal constraints.
- jraph 5y ago
  You can use GPL code commercially, as long as you release what needs to be released as GPL for the AGPL, that's probably your entire codebase. You cannot use AGPL code in non-AGPL codebase or as a library in a non-AGPL. Same for LGPL, except you can use LGPL code as a dynamic library in a non-GPL codebase, as long as you redistribute modifications to the LGPL code. You can sell *GPL software or services around it.