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Genuine question, how does AGPL restrict use? From my reading of it, it is only ensuring that any modifications to the source code must be made available if yo

Genuine question, how does AGPL restrict use? From my reading of it, it is only ensuring that any modifications to the source code must be made available if you "distribute" the software, where distribution now includes hosting it as a service. It seems more or less in the original spirit of GPLv2 but updated for a SaaS driven world. If you consider v3 restrictive then you must also consider v2 restrictive, just in a more narrow way.

kazinator 2y ago
Running a program, as a service or not, isn't redistribution. It is use. The original spirit of the GPL is about identifying people doing bad things we don't like and trying to prevent them. All those bad things have to do with redistribution, not with using the program. The AGPL is still about identifying people doing bad things we don't like, except now those people are just running the program. This is no different from Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, ... identifying people using their software in ways they don't like, and crafting their EULA terms to turn those activities into a license violation. A free software license simply cannot dictate uses, like where and how you run the program, and who can access it from where. A free software license can only use copyright law, and only be concerned with copying. EULAs go beyond coypright; they try to connect non-copying activities to copyright by the doctrine that if the user engages in the forbidden activities, their license is terminated (and thus it becomes copyright infringement for them to continue to have a now unlicensed copy of the software).
- dafelst 2y ago
  I'm still not following - you're talking about restrictions on use, but what restrictions on use does AGPL apply? What can I not do with AGPL software? What are the forbidden activities you reference? The only caveat seems to be making the source code available to users of the software, which is also the case with GPLv2, just under narrower conditions. I have no dog in this race, nor any particular attachment to any particular license, I'm just trying to better understand what these restrictions are that you're referencing.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    > which is also the case with GPLv2 No it isn't; under the GPLv2, the source code must be available to those to whom compiled code has been redistributed. Whether they are users doesn't matter. The restrictions are that if you violate the license, your use of the program is infringing. > What can I not do with AGPL software? You cannot change it and run it yourself, without hosting the source code. You cannot combine an AGPL program with proprietary code and operate it, because you cannot release the proprietary code.
    - Avshalom 2y ago
      >You cannot change it and run it yourself, without hosting the source code. Yes I can. It's only if I let other people use my changed code that they become entitled to a copy. >You cannot combine an AGPL program with proprietary code and operate it, because you cannot release the proprietary code. hmm, gotta say that sounds like the proprietary code is the thing infringing on my usage.
      - kazinator 2y ago
        Well no, someone combining the proprietary code with the AGPL code infringes if they run that code such that it is exposed to visitors.
        pxc 2y ago
        Depending on the license of the proprietary software and who is creating the software derived from both of them, that derivative work could easily be in violation of both licenses. lol
    - meiraleal 2y ago
      >> What can I not do with AGPL software? > You cannot change it and run it yourself, without hosting the source code. So your point is that people should be free to take whatever they want for free and dont't contribute back? I'm glad there is a license made to put a limit on people like you then
- sgarland 2y ago
  > Running a program, as a service or not, isn't redistribution. It is use. Hard disagree. You're redistributing the software in a manner for people to easily use it. If you rip a movie you own, there's no distinction that I'm aware of in copyright law between hosting the .ISO on an FTP server and hosting the .MKV as a stream. They're both redistributing, it's just that one is designed for ephemeral consumption.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    That's broadcasting. The recipient of a stream can capture the film to create their own .MKV they can further stream or pass on. Equating the running of a program with broadcasting is the kind of sophistry we might expect from Apple or Adobe or Oracle or their ilk. Certain portions of a service program may be broadcast, like for instance certain string literals carrying text that appears at the remote end point. The bulk of the software is not transmitted. It transmits and receives messages, which are mostly not that program. The remote end cannot recover a copy of the program from these messages. Some bits of literal data, but none of the code. (There are obvious exceptions, like programs transmitted to web browsers for local execution.)
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > They're both redistributing Well, yes. While perhaps some metadata is lost, the content that is worth fighting for is captured in both cases. Practically speaking, there is no difference between the original source, an ISO rip, and an MKV rip. At least to the untrained eye, they are in every way equivalent. They both are redistribution, indeed. That is not the case for SaaS in question. What you download during use can in no way be reconstructed into its original form. You can't use the software for a while and then, from what you've collected, start running the software on your local machine. The artifacts of use are very different from the software itself. To stick with your analogy, watching a movie on Netflix does not give you a copy of their server software. Distribution has not occurred.
  - tzs 2y ago
    That analogy does not work because in all the cases you describe a copy of the movie ends up with the viewer. When you connect to a remote server over a computer and upload data and receive back results produced by the server software you do not receive a copy of the program. You receive a copy of the output that the program produced.
- graemep 2y ago
  > The AGPL is still about identifying people doing bad things we don't like, except now those people are just running the program. Its the same "bad thing" as distributing a modified binary without the source. Its a way of denying end users access to the source code. You can do whatever you like with AGPL code, as long as you make the source available. it is VERY different from saying "you cannot do this with your software". It is just changing the conditions under which make source available is required to keep up with how people use software has changed. AGPL is nothing like a EULA. It is a license, not a contract. It is very similar to the GPL
  - kazinator 2y ago
    The AGPL is absolutely a EULA. The user of a program is the one who installs it somewhere and runs it. Outside people interacting with the program are visitors. They don't have the source code because they don't have the program at all in any form. It has not been distributed to them. The source code to the program doesn't even do them any good. They cannot use that to prevent harms perpetrated by the operators of that application.
    - graemep 2y ago
      A EULA needs to be a contract. THe AGPL is clearly not a contract nor does it meet the basic requirements for an enforceable contract in common law countries. Can you show me where I am wrong about this? > The source code to the program doesn't even do them any good. They cannot use that to prevent harms perpetrated by the operators of that application. It does. It means they can run their own instance instead of being permanently tied to the operator of the service. It means they can modify and run the software. > They don't have the source code because they don't have to program at all in any form. That is sophistry. For the type of software AGPL is designed for the functionality provided is the same as it would if they had their own install. It is called "software as a service" for a reason. The reason the AGPL exists is because the rise of SAAS has made the distinction you are making meaningless. > They don't have the source code because they don't have to program at all in any form. Users of GPL software do not "have to program". The point is they can. The same is true with AGPL.
- fweimer 2y ago
  The AGPL does not restrict running the program. Only if you run modified versions, things get complicated. That being said, I think the AGPL is only appropriate for programs that come with a built-in source redistribution mechanism that ensures that modified versions automatically comply with the source code redistribution requirement.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    You realize that would create a problem for some organization whose idiot employee combined proprietary code with the AGPLed program and the thing automatically redistributed the whole infringing mess to the world. Even if there were safeguards against such a situation, someone would blow past them.
- remram 2y ago
  > Running a program, as a service or not, isn't redistribution. It is use. This is not how I see it at all. The ones using it are the users, and if they sit across the network you are distributing it in a very tangible sense. The idea that the admin running a service is the one doing the "use" and not the users of your service is debatable to say the least.
  - warkdarrior 2y ago
    So when you compile a program and distribute over the network as a binary, you are also distributing the compiler that created the binary?
    - progval 2y ago
      From section 13 of the license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html): > if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network [...] an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version [...] From the Merriam-Webster dictionary: > interact, verb: to act upon one another When distributing a binary from a compiler to a user, the user does not act upon the compiler. So the user is not interacting with the compiler, so you don't need to distribute your modified compiler's code any more than you would with the GPL.
      - kazinator 2y ago
        That's not what is in question. Of course if you someone has reason to comply with section 13 of the license, then users who download the code are having the code distributed to them. The disputed claim is that users who interact with a remote program are, by that interaction, being distributed the program. The GNU AGPL itself explicitly disagrees with this; check its definition of "propagate" and "convey".
    - remram 2y ago
      Depending on the license of the compiler, yes, the binary is related to the compiler in some way. In practice it literally contains code from the compiler.
- lmm 2y ago
  > The original spirit of the GPL is about identifying people doing bad things we don't like and trying to prevent them. All those bad things have to do with redistribution, not with using the program. It's not. It's about making sure users can fix the bugs in the software they want or need to use, and share those fixes with others. Rules about redistribution are a means to that end. The GPL was originally written in an era of mainframes and terminals, the idea of running a program via some intermediate system is not novel. But no-one in that era would have dared try to argue that a program hadn't been distributed to you because it was running on a machine in a different building rather than one under your desk. > This is no different from Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, ... identifying people using their software in ways they don't like, and crafting their EULA terms to turn those activities into a license violation. If you make your equivalences broad enough then anything is equivalent to anything else. "This license is written in text, making it no different from that license that is written in text". > A free software license can only use copyright law, and only be concerned with copying. You're confusing ends and means. The free software movement was actively opposed to copyright law and wanted software to be uncopyrightable. But that was no reason not to use a copyright license that served their goals.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    The GPL is not simply about fixing bugs. It's about preventing the existence of versions of the program in which you cannot easily find or fix bugs, and the underlying ideology that they should be no such programs. And not only bugs but deliberate undesirable or malicious behavior. The problem with closed source proprietary software is that you don't know what's hiding in the binaries. If software were uncopyrightable, they would still be binaries without source code, which you would have to reverse engineer to find out what harm they perpetrate actively or possibly through their security flaws. Moreover, if you wrote a piece of free source code, anyone could do anything with it they wish, including removing your name, and not attributing you in any way in the documentation accompanying the compiled code. Stallman was a control freak who insisted that people modifying his code give back the contributions to the project. In the world without copyrighted programs he would have had no leg to stand on, and he knew that. A world in which programs are not copyrighted would need laws which ban the distribution of binaries without buildable source code, and all the tools needed to build it and their source code. A program is not distributed to you if someone else installed it on a machine you don't own and you're just borrowing that machine. It doesn't matter if you're physically at the console, we're at a remote dumb terminal or smart client. The program was distributed to your school, company or friend or whoever. I don't think that even the people who drafted the AGPL believe the nonsense doctrine that the visitors to a server have been distributed the software. That's just something invented by the downstream AGPL apologists. (And of course vendors of proprietary software like the doctrine also. If you buy a program and let 10 people use it via remote access to your machine, they would like the legal system to believe that those people were distributed the program and that you should buy ten more licenses). The doctrine is not required for the AGPL to work. The software distributed to the individual or organization installing it and running it for visitors. The license is concerned with the behavior of that individual or organization, and uses the power of copyright to make their permission to have a copy of the program conditional on their usage behavior. The visitors to the running application are not parties to the license. The GNU AGPL contains these definitions: > To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well. > To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

kazinator 2y ago

Running a program, as a service or not, isn't redistribution. It is use. The original spirit of the GPL is about identifying people doing bad things we don't like and trying to prevent them. All those bad things have to do with redistribution, not with using the program. The AGPL is still about identifying people doing bad things we don't like, except now those people are just running the program. This is no different from Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, ... identifying people using their software in ways they don't like, and crafting their EULA terms to turn those activities into a license violation. A free software license simply cannot dictate uses, like where and how you run the program, and who can access it from where. A free software license can only use copyright law, and only be concerned with copying. EULAs go beyond coypright; they try to connect non-copying activities to copyright by the doctrine that if the user engages in the forbidden activities, their license is terminated (and thus it becomes copyright infringement for them to continue to have a now unlicensed copy of the software).

dafelst 2y ago
I'm still not following - you're talking about restrictions on use, but what restrictions on use does AGPL apply? What can I not do with AGPL software? What are the forbidden activities you reference? The only caveat seems to be making the source code available to users of the software, which is also the case with GPLv2, just under narrower conditions. I have no dog in this race, nor any particular attachment to any particular license, I'm just trying to better understand what these restrictions are that you're referencing.
- kazinator 2y ago
  > which is also the case with GPLv2 No it isn't; under the GPLv2, the source code must be available to those to whom compiled code has been redistributed. Whether they are users doesn't matter. The restrictions are that if you violate the license, your use of the program is infringing. > What can I not do with AGPL software? You cannot change it and run it yourself, without hosting the source code. You cannot combine an AGPL program with proprietary code and operate it, because you cannot release the proprietary code.
  - Avshalom 2y ago
    >You cannot change it and run it yourself, without hosting the source code. Yes I can. It's only if I let other people use my changed code that they become entitled to a copy. >You cannot combine an AGPL program with proprietary code and operate it, because you cannot release the proprietary code. hmm, gotta say that sounds like the proprietary code is the thing infringing on my usage.
    - kazinator 2y ago
      Well no, someone combining the proprietary code with the AGPL code infringes if they run that code such that it is exposed to visitors.
      - pxc 2y ago
        Depending on the license of the proprietary software and who is creating the software derived from both of them, that derivative work could easily be in violation of both licenses. lol
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    >> What can I not do with AGPL software? > You cannot change it and run it yourself, without hosting the source code. So your point is that people should be free to take whatever they want for free and dont't contribute back? I'm glad there is a license made to put a limit on people like you then
sgarland 2y ago
> Running a program, as a service or not, isn't redistribution. It is use. Hard disagree. You're redistributing the software in a manner for people to easily use it. If you rip a movie you own, there's no distinction that I'm aware of in copyright law between hosting the .ISO on an FTP server and hosting the .MKV as a stream. They're both redistributing, it's just that one is designed for ephemeral consumption.
- kazinator 2y ago
  That's broadcasting. The recipient of a stream can capture the film to create their own .MKV they can further stream or pass on. Equating the running of a program with broadcasting is the kind of sophistry we might expect from Apple or Adobe or Oracle or their ilk. Certain portions of a service program may be broadcast, like for instance certain string literals carrying text that appears at the remote end point. The bulk of the software is not transmitted. It transmits and receives messages, which are mostly not that program. The remote end cannot recover a copy of the program from these messages. Some bits of literal data, but none of the code. (There are obvious exceptions, like programs transmitted to web browsers for local execution.)
- randomdata 2y ago
  > They're both redistributing Well, yes. While perhaps some metadata is lost, the content that is worth fighting for is captured in both cases. Practically speaking, there is no difference between the original source, an ISO rip, and an MKV rip. At least to the untrained eye, they are in every way equivalent. They both are redistribution, indeed. That is not the case for SaaS in question. What you download during use can in no way be reconstructed into its original form. You can't use the software for a while and then, from what you've collected, start running the software on your local machine. The artifacts of use are very different from the software itself. To stick with your analogy, watching a movie on Netflix does not give you a copy of their server software. Distribution has not occurred.
- tzs 2y ago
  That analogy does not work because in all the cases you describe a copy of the movie ends up with the viewer. When you connect to a remote server over a computer and upload data and receive back results produced by the server software you do not receive a copy of the program. You receive a copy of the output that the program produced.
graemep 2y ago
> The AGPL is still about identifying people doing bad things we don't like, except now those people are just running the program. Its the same "bad thing" as distributing a modified binary without the source. Its a way of denying end users access to the source code. You can do whatever you like with AGPL code, as long as you make the source available. it is VERY different from saying "you cannot do this with your software". It is just changing the conditions under which make source available is required to keep up with how people use software has changed. AGPL is nothing like a EULA. It is a license, not a contract. It is very similar to the GPL
- kazinator 2y ago
  The AGPL is absolutely a EULA. The user of a program is the one who installs it somewhere and runs it. Outside people interacting with the program are visitors. They don't have the source code because they don't have the program at all in any form. It has not been distributed to them. The source code to the program doesn't even do them any good. They cannot use that to prevent harms perpetrated by the operators of that application.
  - graemep 2y ago
    A EULA needs to be a contract. THe AGPL is clearly not a contract nor does it meet the basic requirements for an enforceable contract in common law countries. Can you show me where I am wrong about this? > The source code to the program doesn't even do them any good. They cannot use that to prevent harms perpetrated by the operators of that application. It does. It means they can run their own instance instead of being permanently tied to the operator of the service. It means they can modify and run the software. > They don't have the source code because they don't have to program at all in any form. That is sophistry. For the type of software AGPL is designed for the functionality provided is the same as it would if they had their own install. It is called "software as a service" for a reason. The reason the AGPL exists is because the rise of SAAS has made the distinction you are making meaningless. > They don't have the source code because they don't have to program at all in any form. Users of GPL software do not "have to program". The point is they can. The same is true with AGPL.
fweimer 2y ago
The AGPL does not restrict running the program. Only if you run modified versions, things get complicated. That being said, I think the AGPL is only appropriate for programs that come with a built-in source redistribution mechanism that ensures that modified versions automatically comply with the source code redistribution requirement.
- kazinator 2y ago
  You realize that would create a problem for some organization whose idiot employee combined proprietary code with the AGPLed program and the thing automatically redistributed the whole infringing mess to the world. Even if there were safeguards against such a situation, someone would blow past them.
remram 2y ago
> Running a program, as a service or not, isn't redistribution. It is use. This is not how I see it at all. The ones using it are the users, and if they sit across the network you are distributing it in a very tangible sense. The idea that the admin running a service is the one doing the "use" and not the users of your service is debatable to say the least.
- warkdarrior 2y ago
  So when you compile a program and distribute over the network as a binary, you are also distributing the compiler that created the binary?
  - progval 2y ago
    From section 13 of the license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html): > if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network [...] an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version [...] From the Merriam-Webster dictionary: > interact, verb: to act upon one another When distributing a binary from a compiler to a user, the user does not act upon the compiler. So the user is not interacting with the compiler, so you don't need to distribute your modified compiler's code any more than you would with the GPL.
    - kazinator 2y ago
      That's not what is in question. Of course if you someone has reason to comply with section 13 of the license, then users who download the code are having the code distributed to them. The disputed claim is that users who interact with a remote program are, by that interaction, being distributed the program. The GNU AGPL itself explicitly disagrees with this; check its definition of "propagate" and "convey".
  - remram 2y ago
    Depending on the license of the compiler, yes, the binary is related to the compiler in some way. In practice it literally contains code from the compiler.
lmm 2y ago
> The original spirit of the GPL is about identifying people doing bad things we don't like and trying to prevent them. All those bad things have to do with redistribution, not with using the program. It's not. It's about making sure users can fix the bugs in the software they want or need to use, and share those fixes with others. Rules about redistribution are a means to that end. The GPL was originally written in an era of mainframes and terminals, the idea of running a program via some intermediate system is not novel. But no-one in that era would have dared try to argue that a program hadn't been distributed to you because it was running on a machine in a different building rather than one under your desk. > This is no different from Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, ... identifying people using their software in ways they don't like, and crafting their EULA terms to turn those activities into a license violation. If you make your equivalences broad enough then anything is equivalent to anything else. "This license is written in text, making it no different from that license that is written in text". > A free software license can only use copyright law, and only be concerned with copying. You're confusing ends and means. The free software movement was actively opposed to copyright law and wanted software to be uncopyrightable. But that was no reason not to use a copyright license that served their goals.
- kazinator 2y ago
  The GPL is not simply about fixing bugs. It's about preventing the existence of versions of the program in which you cannot easily find or fix bugs, and the underlying ideology that they should be no such programs. And not only bugs but deliberate undesirable or malicious behavior. The problem with closed source proprietary software is that you don't know what's hiding in the binaries. If software were uncopyrightable, they would still be binaries without source code, which you would have to reverse engineer to find out what harm they perpetrate actively or possibly through their security flaws. Moreover, if you wrote a piece of free source code, anyone could do anything with it they wish, including removing your name, and not attributing you in any way in the documentation accompanying the compiled code. Stallman was a control freak who insisted that people modifying his code give back the contributions to the project. In the world without copyrighted programs he would have had no leg to stand on, and he knew that. A world in which programs are not copyrighted would need laws which ban the distribution of binaries without buildable source code, and all the tools needed to build it and their source code. A program is not distributed to you if someone else installed it on a machine you don't own and you're just borrowing that machine. It doesn't matter if you're physically at the console, we're at a remote dumb terminal or smart client. The program was distributed to your school, company or friend or whoever. I don't think that even the people who drafted the AGPL believe the nonsense doctrine that the visitors to a server have been distributed the software. That's just something invented by the downstream AGPL apologists. (And of course vendors of proprietary software like the doctrine also. If you buy a program and let 10 people use it via remote access to your machine, they would like the legal system to believe that those people were distributed the program and that you should buy ten more licenses). The doctrine is not required for the AGPL to work. The software distributed to the individual or organization installing it and running it for visitors. The license is concerned with the behavior of that individual or organization, and uses the power of copyright to make their permission to have a copy of the program conditional on their usage behavior. The visitors to the running application are not parties to the license. The GNU AGPL contains these definitions: > To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well. > To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.