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Comment by nroah | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why are there so many proponents of the AGPL when it's one of the most restrictive and therefore against freedom licences there are.

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It removes developer freedoms in order to ensure user freedoms; claiming it is "against freedoms" is like saying the Bill of Rights--which restricts the acts of government--is "against freedom".

It's the opposite thing because there usually are a thousand users for every developer, so you're restricting the freedoms of 1000 people to defend the freedom of 1 person. While there's 1 government official whose freedoms are restricted for every 1000 people (made up numbers but you get the point)

In this metaphor developer == government official and users == citizens, so you should agree with GP.

Again, AGPL restricts what developers can do with software to let users enjoy more freedom.

Actually I don't care much about that, I just don't want to see companies come and exploit developers work without having to give back anything. So I really favor GPL and AGPL. Then, if somebody prefers BSD and MIT, no hard feelings.

Please re-read your parent's point. By your own logic, if no.(users) > no.(devs), then it makes sense to prioritise freedoms(users) > freedoms(devs), which is precisely what the AGPL does.

Not just user freedoms, the freedom of other developers too.

All it does is ensure copyleft works with software as a service, in which you don't even get a binary that you could, with GPL, request the sources for.

Similar to how my freedom to shoot you is restricted by your freedom to be safe. There is no such thing as a licence that protects every freedom for everyone.

Because for some people, open source is not about freedom of use of the software, but freedom of source. They feel that existing FOSS licences can't protect against modification without release in the case of cloud usage, so they use this licence to protect the openness of modification.

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