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> And nice to see you’ve kept it open source instead of some other Show HN submissions where they take open source work, make is closed, change a few things, an

> And nice to see you’ve kept it open source instead of some other Show HN submissions where they take open source work, make is closed, change a few things, and claim they’ve created something great. The seem to have taken a "BSD-3-Clause" licensed project and change it to AGPLv3 licensed one. That's not the same thing, but it's similar to what you're concerned about.

prasoonds 2y ago
This is true. All new added code is licensed under AGPLv3. But I fail to see how it's the same thing as modifying and open-source tool and re-selling it as a closed source tool. This is what AGPL gives us - anyone can use Pretzel however they want. They can even re-package and re-sell it if they want so long as they too open-source their modifications and improvements. Selecting the license for an open-source tool backed by a company is tricky. You want your code to be open-source for it's benefits (for eg, for us one benefit is building trust with people working with sensitive data). But, the history of open-source tools is full of tools that another company just started reselling without doing any of the work (sentry, mongodb etc). So, you need to find a balance. AGPLv3 strikes the right balance for us.
- williamstein 2y ago
  > ... I fail to see how it's the same thing ... You're right that it is not the same thing, which is why I wrote "That's not the same thing [...]" in the comment you're responding to. I have done the same as you guys (building an AGPLv3 or 'worse' product on top of BSD licensed code) many, many times! Anyway, what you're doing is really exciting!
  - prasoonds 2y ago
    That's fair, I was mostly responding to "but it's similar to what you're concerned about" because I didn't think the concerns are the same (but I can see your perspective on it too! While we are "giving away" the code, we're definitely posing some limitation). Thanks for the kind words, we're exited to be building this :)
    - williamstein 2y ago
      I would also be happy to video chat with you guys anytime, since we've built similar things over the years (wstein at sagemath.com).
lmeyerov 2y ago
How does that even work, copying in and relicensing someone's bsd3 code as your own AGPLv3?
- prasoonds 2y ago
  You're right, that's not how it would work! If you look at our license - all the Jupyter code stays BSD3. If we modify any BSD3 code, the modified code stays BSD3. All the new code we write - in separate files - is AGPLv3 however and is clearly delineated in the repo in the file headers.

prasoonds 2y ago

This is true. All new added code is licensed under AGPLv3. But I fail to see how it's the same thing as modifying and open-source tool and re-selling it as a closed source tool. This is what AGPL gives us - anyone can use Pretzel however they want. They can even re-package and re-sell it if they want so long as they too open-source their modifications and improvements. Selecting the license for an open-source tool backed by a company is tricky. You want your code to be open-source for it's benefits (for eg, for us one benefit is building trust with people working with sensitive data). But, the history of open-source tools is full of tools that another company just started reselling without doing any of the work (sentry, mongodb etc). So, you need to find a balance. AGPLv3 strikes the right balance for us.

williamstein 2y ago
> ... I fail to see how it's the same thing ... You're right that it is not the same thing, which is why I wrote "That's not the same thing [...]" in the comment you're responding to. I have done the same as you guys (building an AGPLv3 or 'worse' product on top of BSD licensed code) many, many times! Anyway, what you're doing is really exciting!
- prasoonds 2y ago
  That's fair, I was mostly responding to "but it's similar to what you're concerned about" because I didn't think the concerns are the same (but I can see your perspective on it too! While we are "giving away" the code, we're definitely posing some limitation). Thanks for the kind words, we're exited to be building this :)
  - williamstein 2y ago
    I would also be happy to video chat with you guys anytime, since we've built similar things over the years (wstein at sagemath.com).

lmeyerov 2y ago

How does that even work, copying in and relicensing someone's bsd3 code as your own AGPLv3?

prasoonds 2y ago
You're right, that's not how it would work! If you look at our license - all the Jupyter code stays BSD3. If we modify any BSD3 code, the modified code stays BSD3. All the new code we write - in separate files - is AGPLv3 however and is clearly delineated in the repo in the file headers.