Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dayshine | Hacker News Reader

Except AGPL has very few resources and is incredibly unclear on what it actually covers. Mainly because of the huge conflict of interest that the few adopters have with their commercial dual-license.

E.g.

- I have a database.

- I have a closed-source website that uses this database

- I have an APGL service that uses this database

Do I have to opensource the website? APGL companies say yes.

View on HN

MongoDB is the exception that says "no".

Every hypothetical I've seen addressed with the AGPL involves a company running a server for users and then modifying that server and having to give the code to those users. But rarely is anything that clear: if I have a task queue that processes internal jobs, do I need to provide the code to end-users? Or are the "clients" just my app and the queue workers? If I don't, can't the whole AGPL be trivially circumvented with a reverse proxy?

I would give the AGPL more than three "?"s.

I thought the AGPL only applied to modifications of the AGPL'd software? E.g. you'd have to open source any modifications of the AGPL service you make.

Yes, but to "modify" under the definition of GPL (which AGPL extends) includes linking.

Which is why the weaker LGPL excludes linking, AGPL is stronger, so definitely includes linking.

How does the concept of linking translates to a deployed database that is interfaced using some SQL endpoint or REST service?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com