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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

AGPL doesn't protect the Free Software business. It protects the Free Software code itself.

The fact that a company backing an AGPL-licensed work goes under isn't the direct concern of the license. The fact that the code itself remains as Free Software, with a source-release obligation, even when run as an online service, is the principle concern.

Copyleft free software licenses, as with the GPL and AGPL, promote the concept and system of free software, first and foremost.

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You're right, but there's another concern: who maintains the software? The original developers forming a company that supports development is not possible if the company is not protected by the license in some way.

Under the philosophy of the FSF, that'd be the "commons", i.e., the users of the software take on responsibility for adding new features or fixing bugs that affect them, and then contributing it back.

Without the provisions of the AGPL, an Amazon could co-opt some GPL'd (or even more permissively / less copylefted licence: MIT/BSD as examples), make extensive changes, use the code as part of an online service, and have no obligation to provide source to user(s).

Under the AGPL, the source-disclosure provision persists.

In both cases, Amazon is doing software development, but in the first, they're not contributing back to the codebase. In the second, they are.

Amazon are maintaining the software. Along with other users.

So whats the lesson here? If you don't want your company to become a gazelle, you would have to become a gnu!

Except that Amazon does contribute to less copylefted open source code, so there must be some motivation beyond licensing forcing them to.

Any breakdown you're aware of for that by licence?

Note that AGPL applies to few projects at this point. Amazon is very heavily reliant on, e.g., Linux and Xen, both of which are GPL v2.

I don't know of such a breakdown, there is a list on this page of some of the projects they contribute to as well as their own open source code. https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/?opensource-all.sort-by=it...

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