> Every few weeks we see a post on HN about an MIT-licensed project that gets picked up by AWS or Azure and the general response is "should've been GPL". If yo

> Every few weeks we see a post on HN about an MIT-licensed project that gets picked up by AWS or Azure and the general response is "should've been GPL". If you are distributing GPL software, the GPL says that you are obliged to provide the source code of the software on request. Amazon or Microsoft use this as a loophole to claim they have no obligation to release the source code of any GPL software they use on AWS or Azure. They claim they are not distributing the GPL software but only executing the softwares on their servers and providing it to the users as a service offering. This is why the Free Software Foundation created the Affero General Public License (AGPL). The AGPL includes all the provisions of the GPL but also has extra clauses that makes it obligatory to provide the source code even if the software isn't distributed but made available as a "service" through some server. "The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there." (Why the Affero GPL - https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html ). This is why everyone now recommends that you should use the AGPL (instead of the GPL / MIT / BSD license etc) for open source projects. > This case right here highlights that in France that doesn't work either ... it's a contract issue and not a copyright one so the case gets thrown out. The French court did conclude that there is no case to be made under copyright law, and that it considered the GPL as a contract. And so any dispute between parties on the GPL can only be judged under France's "contract laws". This doesn't mean that the GPL is no longer valid in France. France is just asserting that the GPL is a contract. You can still take anyone who violates the GPL to court. You just have to file the case under the right law. When you claim in court that someone in breaking the law, you have to point out the right laws that you claim are being violated, or your case will be thrown out. (It's like adultery laws - adultery was once a criminal offence. It is now treated as a civil offence in many countries. Meaning, you can no longer file a complain with the police if your spouse cheats on you, and have them investigated, arrested and tried in court as a criminal. But you can still sue your spouse in court and get damages.)