3 ms·

AGPL will make this unusable for a lot of places.

by xxpor 2y ago

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Yep. MAANG won't touch it because they can't by company policy. But some FOSS people don't know any bettor or commercial FOSS-washed startups don't understand the implications of encumbering a project with impractical strings on use because "everyone else is doing it." Either let the code be free or keep it proprietary rather than waffle or force unreasonable BS on users.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > But some FOSS people don't know any bettor or commercial FOSS-washed startups don't understand the implications of encumbering a project with impractical strings on use because "everyone else is doing it." Or, they correctly understand exactly how the license works and intentionally choose something that's effectively impossible to use in anything proprietary (for some definition of "use in" that's probably less severe than you're implying, though IANAL). > Either let the code be free or keep it proprietary rather than waffle or force unreasonable BS on users. Correct; AGPL is 100% Free and a commendable choice. (Not that there's anything wrong with permissive licenses, but copyleft is also good.)
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    AGPL is Russian roulette by footgun with 6 loaded chambers. They are free to be virtuous in their self-righteous RMS talking points but dead wrong in the economic realities and what freedom actually means rather than dithering about a purist utopia.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      So to try and be very charitable and read between the lines to get something out of your vague insults... you think FOSS needs to be possible to wrap in proprietary in order to get enough funding or labor to succeed? Because that could plausibly be a defensible claim, but I think I still disagree; even if AGPL really meant it was impossible to use without publishing everything (which I'm pretty sure isn't actually true but again IANAL) software can still be created and used purely by non-commercial actors (i.e. actual human beings writing software to be useful to themselves and others), and also by pure FOSS companies (see: sourcehut).
      - lal 2y ago
        Yeah, it is practically true that AGPL means a project is impossible to use for a lot of people, but that doesn't have much to do with the license itself. A lot of developers work for companies that have legal departments that would rather err on the side of caution with copyleft stuff. But of course a lot of companies love GPL code nowadays. After all, the GPL allows them to exploit the loophole closed by the Affero clause, especially in the case of web services companies. From a corporate perspective, free software is good, but it's only great when you don't have to follow it, because then you effectively get to crowdsource some of your development costs without any reciprocal obligations. The result is that a lot of developers have had to sign contracts with their employers that say they'll never use or contribute to AGPL code even in their personal time. This is often reinforced by mandatory compliance training that repeats bogus nonsense about how if you ever run an AGPL program on your personal laptop you could turn the entire company codebase into GPL code. These myths then proliferate and end up driving other companies to do the same thing. It's all FUD of course, whether the people repeating it know that or not, but the practical consequences are that a lot of people legally cannot interact with AGPL projects at all. Again, that's not because the license is all that restrictive but because of what amounts to a universal corporate boycott.
        cilki 2y ago
        It's impossible to please everyone :). What percentage of companies do you think impose these kinds of restrictions? From what I've seen, lots of small/medium tech places barely care about software licenses at all.

AGPL will make this unusable for a lot of places.

by xxpor 2y ago

AGPL will make this unusable for a lot of places.

Yep. MAANG won't touch it because they can't by company policy. But some FOSS people don't know any bettor or commercial FOSS-washed startups don't understand the implications of encumbering a project with impractical strings on use because "everyone else is doing it." Either let the code be free or keep it proprietary rather than waffle or force unreasonable BS on users.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> But some FOSS people don't know any bettor or commercial FOSS-washed startups don't understand the implications of encumbering a project with impractical strings on use because "everyone else is doing it." Or, they correctly understand exactly how the license works and intentionally choose something that's effectively impossible to use in anything proprietary (for some definition of "use in" that's probably less severe than you're implying, though IANAL). > Either let the code be free or keep it proprietary rather than waffle or force unreasonable BS on users. Correct; AGPL is 100% Free and a commendable choice. (Not that there's anything wrong with permissive licenses, but copyleft is also good.)
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  AGPL is Russian roulette by footgun with 6 loaded chambers. They are free to be virtuous in their self-righteous RMS talking points but dead wrong in the economic realities and what freedom actually means rather than dithering about a purist utopia.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    So to try and be very charitable and read between the lines to get something out of your vague insults... you think FOSS needs to be possible to wrap in proprietary in order to get enough funding or labor to succeed? Because that could plausibly be a defensible claim, but I think I still disagree; even if AGPL really meant it was impossible to use without publishing everything (which I'm pretty sure isn't actually true but again IANAL) software can still be created and used purely by non-commercial actors (i.e. actual human beings writing software to be useful to themselves and others), and also by pure FOSS companies (see: sourcehut).
    - lal 2y ago
      Yeah, it is practically true that AGPL means a project is impossible to use for a lot of people, but that doesn't have much to do with the license itself. A lot of developers work for companies that have legal departments that would rather err on the side of caution with copyleft stuff. But of course a lot of companies love GPL code nowadays. After all, the GPL allows them to exploit the loophole closed by the Affero clause, especially in the case of web services companies. From a corporate perspective, free software is good, but it's only great when you don't have to follow it, because then you effectively get to crowdsource some of your development costs without any reciprocal obligations. The result is that a lot of developers have had to sign contracts with their employers that say they'll never use or contribute to AGPL code even in their personal time. This is often reinforced by mandatory compliance training that repeats bogus nonsense about how if you ever run an AGPL program on your personal laptop you could turn the entire company codebase into GPL code. These myths then proliferate and end up driving other companies to do the same thing. It's all FUD of course, whether the people repeating it know that or not, but the practical consequences are that a lot of people legally cannot interact with AGPL projects at all. Again, that's not because the license is all that restrictive but because of what amounts to a universal corporate boycott.
      - cilki 2y ago
        It's impossible to please everyone :). What percentage of companies do you think impose these kinds of restrictions? From what I've seen, lots of small/medium tech places barely care about software licenses at all.