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Third parties attempting to extend the software and sell access are intended to release source code. The only room for profit is in network effects -- any other
by blasdel 17y ago
Third parties attempting to extend the software and sell access are intended to release source code. The only room for profit is in network effects -- any other attempt to sustain margins more than barely above actual costs would be tenuous, as someone else could come along and undercut you.
The copyright holder(s) that licensed their work under the AGPL are not subject to any such restrictions (no multi-licensing is necessary). There's no way to compete with them fairly.
- lamby 17y agoOkay, so you're essentially describing a situation where the copyright holder offers access to a "pro" version and a "vanilla" version, with only the latter being licensed under the AGPL? I would certainly concede that this scenario would make it difficult for third parties to maintain feature parity, but that's a long way from saying the AGPL offers "no way of competing" with the copyright holder; writing features that are not present in any version would be an obvious starting point. (You also grossly misrepresent the market for "network effects", but that's somewhat tangential)
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoDo you have links to a fuller explanation of the problems with the AGPL? A quick Google returned nothing obviously interesting (except this very discussion as result #2).