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I love the AGPL. I can't imagine it becoming popular for generic business functionality in library form, but for highly-specialized libraries (in my case scient

I love the AGPL. I can't imagine it becoming popular for generic business functionality in library form, but for highly-specialized libraries (in my case scientific with industrial applications) it was everything I was looking for --- not least because automated license scanners flag it and scare potential parasites away. It's also a great choice for complete pieces of software (such as DBs, as in this case) to offer a free tier for communal benefit, provided you're genuinely willing to let the project develop a life of its own if the open source community finds reason to mobilize around it. For academic use AGPL compliance is a natural part of life anyway, for non-profits it's a little bit of effort but there's no fundamental objection, and when companies get involved it ensures that either my collaborators and I get a payout for SaaS-ification/proprietarization, or that it only gets used in internal tooling, which means that money gets redistributed to labor (often also to us via consulting fees or custom development arrangements anyway, since we know the code best). It's a model for software development that I can really get behind. Best of luck to you!

philippemnoel 2y ago
Blog author here. I couldn't agree more. Thank you for your kind words and for sharing the academic perspective of using the AGPL - super interesting!
- mroche 2y ago
  I'm a fan of AGPL as well, but there's a point of possible confusion for GNU license variants I personally run in to and maybe others as well. It may be worth specifying which variant of the AGPL you are using, e.g. AGPL-3.0-only or AGPL-3.0-or-later.
  - philippemnoel 2y ago
    That's fair. We use AGPLv3. I haven't seen any AGPL project that wasn't using v3, so we decided to keep it short for readability, but you bring up a very good point.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I'm actually not a fan of this restrictive license and the even more restrictive contributor license that is in place here which is what enables them to sell closed source versions of the software and potentially close source entirely (as other companies have done). AGPL without this is not very practical for companies as it makes selling commercial licenses impractical and is a bit of a turnoff for commercial users. > Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Company and to recipients of software distributed by the Company a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works. If you are happy to contribute code and then have them take it and sell it under a closed source license; or at a later stage just decide to relicense the whole thing as closed source; go for it. But most external contributors probably wouldn't like this. Usually the effect that this has is that the OSS contributor community is pretty much exclusively employees of the company involved. I can't imagine third party companies agreeing on working on this or paying their people to work on this. Why would they?
- ebiester 2y ago
  If you need something else, you pay for it. Open source does not necessarily mean open contribution. It may turn you off, but the tradeoff is that you can make the changes you need and run for your purposes. If your purposes is to make closed source software with it, you will need to pay for that privilege. win-win!
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > If you are happy to contribute code and then have them take it and sell it under a closed source license; or at a later stage just decide to relicense the whole thing as closed source; go for it. Isn't this a core feature of the "unrestrictive" licenses you're a fan of? If you don't like freeloaders, BSD-/MIT-style licenses are even worse because they allow anyone, not just the maintainers, to sell your contributions in a closed-source product.
  - Vegenoid 2y ago
gspr 2y ago
I have no experience with the AGPL, but I really really like the idea of it. However, I get worried when I read takes like Hector Martin's [1]. In essence, he argues that it becomes very easy for the end-user to make even the most trivial of modifications to AGPL code or stuff associated to it and accidentally violate the license's quine requirement. Do you have any insight on this? [1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/737708 https://bugs.gentoo.org/737708
- bityard 2y ago
  Hector built up a strawman in that bug, and not a very good one. I'm surprised the Gentoo devs were as patient with him as they were, given he kept trying to argue his personal interpretations which are not in line with how the AGPL is generally understood by Gentoo and other distributions. And some of the things he claims are just plain wrong.
  - gspr 2y ago
    Could you elaborate a bit with specifics? I feel both sides are just opining, and I'd love to know where to stand on a license, the main idea of which I love.
- philippemnoel 2y ago
  The best way to avoid any such issue is to contribute changes to the upstream project, which is our goal with the choice of license. We're hoping for a centralized ParadeDB project from which everyone can benefit.
  - gspr 2y ago
    > The best way to avoid any such issue is to contribute changes to the upstream project, which is our goal with the choice of license. This I understand. But it doesn't really address Martin's worry about an accidental modification. Or apparent confusion about what constitutes modification.
    - myworkinisgood 2y ago
seba_dos1 2y ago
AGPL is great; CLAs are not.

philippemnoel 2y ago

Blog author here. I couldn't agree more. Thank you for your kind words and for sharing the academic perspective of using the AGPL - super interesting!

mroche 2y ago
I'm a fan of AGPL as well, but there's a point of possible confusion for GNU license variants I personally run in to and maybe others as well. It may be worth specifying which variant of the AGPL you are using, e.g. AGPL-3.0-only or AGPL-3.0-or-later.
- philippemnoel 2y ago
  That's fair. We use AGPLv3. I haven't seen any AGPL project that wasn't using v3, so we decided to keep it short for readability, but you bring up a very good point.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I'm actually not a fan of this restrictive license and the even more restrictive contributor license that is in place here which is what enables them to sell closed source versions of the software and potentially close source entirely (as other companies have done). AGPL without this is not very practical for companies as it makes selling commercial licenses impractical and is a bit of a turnoff for commercial users. > Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Company and to recipients of software distributed by the Company a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works. If you are happy to contribute code and then have them take it and sell it under a closed source license; or at a later stage just decide to relicense the whole thing as closed source; go for it. But most external contributors probably wouldn't like this. Usually the effect that this has is that the OSS contributor community is pretty much exclusively employees of the company involved. I can't imagine third party companies agreeing on working on this or paying their people to work on this. Why would they?

ebiester 2y ago
If you need something else, you pay for it. Open source does not necessarily mean open contribution. It may turn you off, but the tradeoff is that you can make the changes you need and run for your purposes. If your purposes is to make closed source software with it, you will need to pay for that privilege. win-win!
sangnoir 2y ago
> If you are happy to contribute code and then have them take it and sell it under a closed source license; or at a later stage just decide to relicense the whole thing as closed source; go for it. Isn't this a core feature of the "unrestrictive" licenses you're a fan of? If you don't like freeloaders, BSD-/MIT-style licenses are even worse because they allow anyone, not just the maintainers, to sell your contributions in a closed-source product.
- Vegenoid 2y ago

gspr 2y ago

I have no experience with the AGPL, but I really really like the idea of it. However, I get worried when I read takes like Hector Martin's [1]. In essence, he argues that it becomes very easy for the end-user to make even the most trivial of modifications to AGPL code or stuff associated to it and accidentally violate the license's quine requirement. Do you have any insight on this? [1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/737708 https://bugs.gentoo.org/737708

bityard 2y ago
Hector built up a strawman in that bug, and not a very good one. I'm surprised the Gentoo devs were as patient with him as they were, given he kept trying to argue his personal interpretations which are not in line with how the AGPL is generally understood by Gentoo and other distributions. And some of the things he claims are just plain wrong.
- gspr 2y ago
  Could you elaborate a bit with specifics? I feel both sides are just opining, and I'd love to know where to stand on a license, the main idea of which I love.
philippemnoel 2y ago
The best way to avoid any such issue is to contribute changes to the upstream project, which is our goal with the choice of license. We're hoping for a centralized ParadeDB project from which everyone can benefit.
- gspr 2y ago
  > The best way to avoid any such issue is to contribute changes to the upstream project, which is our goal with the choice of license. This I understand. But it doesn't really address Martin's worry about an accidental modification. Or apparent confusion about what constitutes modification.
  - myworkinisgood 2y ago

seba_dos1 2y ago

AGPL is great; CLAs are not.