4 ms·

Not sure what the "quotes" are for. AGPL is open source.

• goldfeld 12y ago
  I think open source has come to mean for many people /no strings-attached/, as in "I can use it in my startup however I care." AGPL is not just open source but closer to a free software ideal, where proprietary services can't just ride on top of a common good library and not provide the source.
• pluma 12y ago
  I didn't mean to imply anything else. I guess italics would have been less ambiguous. AGPL is open source in the "free software" sense. Many people wrongly assume "open source" means "permissively licensed", which of course isn't accurate. As AGPL is probably as restrictive as it gets it might catch those people by surprise. Unless you're working with GPL software exclusively, "open source" as a qualifier does not convey much practical information. I find it more helpful to point out the actual license than to just state whether something is open source or closed source, unless we're in a context where the exact license is irrelevant (e.g. when we're only interested whether something is GPL-compatible or not).
  • belorn 12y ago
    Anyone who want to take software that someone else made and slap their own license on it has to be careful. It can be "open source", "free software", "free ware", "abandon ware", "stuff they downloaded from the Internet", or "stuff they bought". If they want to add their own set of restrictions onto the software, reading and understanding the license is the only way prevent being sued for copyright infringement. Everyone else who do not want to add their own restrictions to the software has a much easier time.