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This. The AGPL deception is you brand yourself as community-minded. As long as you don't rely on external contributions that's fair. But what the AGPL startups
by tgma 2y ago
This.
The AGPL deception is you brand yourself as community-minded. As long as you don't rely on external contributions that's fair. But what the AGPL startups don't emphasize is they require you to either assign your copyright to them or give them extra privileges to your contributions to be able to relicense it under non AGPL (if they don't they don't know what they are doing).
AGPL is also not considered a very safe license by large organizations even if you want to run it internally unmodified, alongside the rest of your application. Many big companies have blanket bans on AGPL.
- jay_kyburz 2y agoWhat happens if you (the contributor) fork the project, make a really great feature in your own fork, make it available as the license requires, then the startup integrates changes from the fork back into their own project. Does this then prevent them from ever changing the license away from AGPL?
- tgma 2y agoYes. If they do it they will be able to license the form back as AGPL but that wouldn't let them license the new thing under their commercial license (effectively useless commercially). At that point they are a peer with you. Some startups may not know this or knowingly violate this.
- goodpoint 2y ago> Does this then prevent them from ever changing the license away from AGPL? No, as long as they either remove the contributed code or distribute it in a way that is compatible with AGPL
- lmm 2y ago> The AGPL deception is you brand yourself as community-minded. As long as you don't rely on external contributions that's fair. But what the AGPL startups don't emphasize is they require you to either assign your copyright to them or give them extra privileges to your contributions to be able to relicense it under non AGPL (if they don't they don't know what they are doing). There's nothing specific to the AGPL or startups here, it's a common model. The FSF themselves require copyright assignment if you want to contribute to FSF projects.
- tgma 2y agoThe model is equivalent. Everything else is different. FSF's structure, purpose, history and guardrails against non-hijacking make it distinct from a startup whose purpose is to claim "open source" but preclude Amazon and keep their revenue stream. Nothing against them or their business model; it's their prerogative, of course. So is the community and customer's read on their future actions. To claim you should assume they are the same is preposterous and/or fooling yourself. Criminals and police officers both have guns too. Doesn't make them identical.
- lmm 2y agoOrganisations that start by claiming to be open-source and rug-pulling are something to be wary of. But neither AGPL nor CLAs are a particular red flag for that. Plenty of well-behaved organisations use CLAs or copyright assignments, and plenty of badly-behaved organisations use licenses other than the AGPL (e.g. Redis had a 3-clause BSD-style license but still did the same thing).
- tgma 2y agoCan’t really refute a hypothetical. Is there a polymarket bet for that? I will categorically take the under on your position for any company doing CLA with AGPL. The intent is so glaringly obvious.
- teddyh 2y agoFirstly, you are wrong. The FSF does not require copyright assignment. It is up to the individual software projects to decide if they require them or not. Secondly, don’t equate the FSF with any other company. The FSF is in the unique position in that the FSF could change the GPL if they wanted to. If you use the GPL/AGPL, the FSF is inherently trustworthy; therefore, it’s completely reasonable to also trust the FSF with a copyright assignment.
- powersnail 2y ago> The FSF is in the unique position in that the FSF could change the GPL if they wanted to. They can publish new versions of GPL if they want to. They can't retroactively change the terms that users of the software and contributors agreed to. Just like any code owners who has the complete control of copyright can publish their code under a different license.
- goodpoint 2y agoThere is no deception. You are perfectly free to use, modify and redistribute AGPL stuff. You can publish your changes without signing the CLA.