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I re-read the author's essay multiple times and I finally realized his proposal rests on a (probably incorrect) assumption of corporate motives and rationale.

by jasode 5y ago

I re-read the author's essay multiple times and I finally realized his proposal rests on a (probably incorrect) assumption of corporate motives and rationale. He believes the only reason companies avoid AGPL is the extra paperwork burden it causes. In other words, he thinks companies avoiding potential license infection of their closed-source code is not the main reason. To be clear, the author believes in the promise of AGPL and thinks the real issue is the payment structure. Excerpt: >So we're going to build on the idea of dual licensing. You know – licensing under both AGPL, which is rather unfriendly to commercial applications and another separate commercial license. In my opinion, it is a very promising funding model for many projects, with one problem: it does not scale. Let's consider Google's ban on AGPL as one example: https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ Thus, using author's framework, we'd interpret Google's ban as merely avoiding too much licensing paperwork (too many software contracts are not scalable) and that they actually have no intellectual property problem with AGPL. Basically, it seems like he's proposing "AGPL"-collective rather than AGPL-multiple-custom-contracts. The philosophy of AGPL is still a crucial part of his proposal. In his view, once the AGPL-collective is in place, the main reason for the Google AGPL ban would no longer be there. Excerpt: As an Open Source developer, you build a new cool library or a tool and license it under AGPL. This preserves all the Free Software freedoms for all the non-commercial users out there. You don't have to compromise on it. Debian and Brew can still ship them. Then you go to one or more FOSS Collectives and sign a licensing deal He's saying programmers don't have to compromise on ideals of AGPL -- just give commercial companies an easier way to pay for it with a one-stop-shopping experience for the license.

anthonyskipper 5y ago
Yeah, the flaw in his assumption is that an enterprise will use anything other than completely open licenses. Most companies ban AGPL, and really anything other than FreeBSD or MIT licenses. Primarily because they don't want to built anything with a non-free licenses as otherwise amounts to a permanent tax for the software infrastructure going forward. The second flaw is assuming open source developers should get paid. If they want to do that they can start a company and sell commercial software, or they can join a big company(Faang, RH, IBM, etc) that outputs open source as a matter of business. But anything else is wishful thinking.
Semaphor 5y ago
> He believes the only reason companies avoid AGPL is the extra paperwork burden it causes. Maybe I’m the one misreading it, but isn’t the author saying that the reason to avoid dual-licensed (e.g. AGPL and commercial) software is the paperwork burden for the commercial license? Going with your Google example, I think there would be no issue as Google would not be using the software under AGPL, but under a commercial license instead.
cycomanic 5y ago
> I re-read the author's essay multiple times and I finally realized his proposal rests on a (probably incorrect) assumption of corporate motives and rationale. He believes the only reason companies avoid AGPL is the extra paperwork burden it causes. I read this very differently (or I'm misunderstanding you), the reason why companies avoid AGPL is because they do not want to open up their closed source code that they run together with (unmodified) GPL/MIT code on their servers. If they were using AGPL they would have to open source their closed code as well. Now companies would likely be willing to pay for a commercial licence of an AGPL library they use, to avoid having to open source their closed code. However, many packages don't even have the possibility for dual-licencing (possibly partly due to the paperwork involved for the maintainers), and also having to track commercial licencing (contracts) for many small packages would put corporations off. Instead he proposes that there are "package deals" which lightens the buerocratic burden on both maintainers and "customers".
josephcsible 5y ago
Isn't the point of paying for an exception that you then have a permissive license and no longer have to comply with the AGPL?

by jasode 5y ago

anthonyskipper 5y ago

Yeah, the flaw in his assumption is that an enterprise will use anything other than completely open licenses. Most companies ban AGPL, and really anything other than FreeBSD or MIT licenses. Primarily because they don't want to built anything with a non-free licenses as otherwise amounts to a permanent tax for the software infrastructure going forward. The second flaw is assuming open source developers should get paid. If they want to do that they can start a company and sell commercial software, or they can join a big company(Faang, RH, IBM, etc) that outputs open source as a matter of business. But anything else is wishful thinking.

Semaphor 5y ago

> He believes the only reason companies avoid AGPL is the extra paperwork burden it causes. Maybe I’m the one misreading it, but isn’t the author saying that the reason to avoid dual-licensed (e.g. AGPL and commercial) software is the paperwork burden for the commercial license? Going with your Google example, I think there would be no issue as Google would not be using the software under AGPL, but under a commercial license instead.

cycomanic 5y ago

> I re-read the author's essay multiple times and I finally realized his proposal rests on a (probably incorrect) assumption of corporate motives and rationale. He believes the only reason companies avoid AGPL is the extra paperwork burden it causes. I read this very differently (or I'm misunderstanding you), the reason why companies avoid AGPL is because they do not want to open up their closed source code that they run together with (unmodified) GPL/MIT code on their servers. If they were using AGPL they would have to open source their closed code as well. Now companies would likely be willing to pay for a commercial licence of an AGPL library they use, to avoid having to open source their closed code. However, many packages don't even have the possibility for dual-licencing (possibly partly due to the paperwork involved for the maintainers), and also having to track commercial licencing (contracts) for many small packages would put corporations off. Instead he proposes that there are "package deals" which lightens the buerocratic burden on both maintainers and "customers".

josephcsible 5y ago

Isn't the point of paying for an exception that you then have a permissive license and no longer have to comply with the AGPL?