2 ms·

You should consider signing one anyway depending on whether you like the creator. This gives the maintainer of the project a way to make money from his work: su

You should consider signing one anyway depending on whether you like the creator. This gives the maintainer of the project a way to make money from his work: sublicensing it to companies under a different license. This promotes the use of extreme copyleft licenses like the AGPLv3. I actually emailed Stallman to ask about the ethics of this. He replied that it's better for everyone when only the creator has this power. Permissive licenses give everyone else that power too. Copyleft licenses don't. Only the copyright owner can sublicense. Others must comply or pay for it. > It is my understanding that as the copyright holders > they have the right to do it without any problems. > They leverage the AGPLv3 to make it harder for their > competitors to use the code to compete against them. I see what you mean. The original developer can engage in a practice that blocks coopertation. By contrast, using some other license, such as the ordinary GPL, would permitt ANY user of the program to engage in that practice. In a perverse sense that could seem more fair, but I think it is also more harmful. On balance, using the AGPL is better.

KPGv2 2y ago
> Only the copyright owner can sublicense If that were true, then the distribution of OSS would be illegal. If I contribute to an open source project, I have licensed my code to that project. If someone downloads that project, the OSS project has sublicensed my code to them. I doubt there's a CLA in the world that doesn't grant the right to sublicense. For example, here is the CLA for VS Code: https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-license-agreement.pdf https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-... the key bit is: > You grant Microsoft . . . a . . . license . . . to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  I probably used the wrong word. I intended to say "release the software to someone else under a different license". If you own the copyrights, you can release code to the general public under AGPLv3 and simultaneously allow some specific third party to use the software under completely different terms. Other people can't do that, they are stuck with AGPLv3. Not a lawyer so I could be terribly mistaken about all this. Hopefully someone will tell me if I'm talking nonsense.
- tzs 2y ago
  GPLv3 says that you cannot sublicense. It says that it is not necessary because of section 10 of the license, which says that "Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License".

KPGv2 2y ago

> Only the copyright owner can sublicense If that were true, then the distribution of OSS would be illegal. If I contribute to an open source project, I have licensed my code to that project. If someone downloads that project, the OSS project has sublicensed my code to them. I doubt there's a CLA in the world that doesn't grant the right to sublicense. For example, here is the CLA for VS Code: https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-license-agreement.pdf https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-... the key bit is: > You grant Microsoft . . . a . . . license . . . to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties

matheusmoreira 2y ago
I probably used the wrong word. I intended to say "release the software to someone else under a different license". If you own the copyrights, you can release code to the general public under AGPLv3 and simultaneously allow some specific third party to use the software under completely different terms. Other people can't do that, they are stuck with AGPLv3. Not a lawyer so I could be terribly mistaken about all this. Hopefully someone will tell me if I'm talking nonsense.
tzs 2y ago
GPLv3 says that you cannot sublicense. It says that it is not necessary because of section 10 of the license, which says that "Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License".