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Comment by gary-kim | Hacker News Reader

At least for me, the fact that it is purely licensed under the AGPL and that the copyright is owned by multiple people makes me far more comfortable with using it. It's a guarantee that the project will remain open source so I don't have to worry about suddenly being in a situation where I have to migrate away because the company or person decided that they don't want to have this be free and open source software anymore.

I guess, to a certain extent, that's because I'm an individual, not a company, and one that tends to open source pretty much everything they write. This is the same licensing that I use for pretty much all my projects (AGPL with no CLA).

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> It's a guarantee that the project will remain open source

What are you talking about? They can change the license to a closed one from a certain version in the future.

For future versions, not past versions.

I don't think any of the mainstream open-source licenses allow you to retroactively revoke or change the license.

If they are the sole copyright owners (no external contribution) or have SLAs, they can for any future version of the software. It is not uncommon, it is just hard as most doesn't have SLA to do this.

> If they are the sole copyright owners (no external contribution)

That's not the scenario gary-kim laid out; you've failed to satisfy the constraints in the premise.

Read better, I'm not replying to him. I agree with him.

Reply better.

I know who you're replying to. The premise that gary-kim laid out is still the relevant context. The hypothetical you're laying out, on the other hand, is not relevant, it's at odds with that premise (not in "agree[ment] with him"), and it's derailing the thread. (Which is the same reason your "future versions, not past versions" is downvoted, for that matter.)

Right. _they_ were not meant to be Wiki.js, but ANY open source project. And was a meant to indicate the same subject as _any_ in this reply:

> I don't think _any_ of the mainstream open-source licenses allow you to retroactively revoke or change the license.

My reply is in this context, not in the parent's parent which you mean as _relevant_ context. If I wanted to include the parent context the reply would be more specific. This was a direct reply to a specific message. This is a very normal way to reply on the internet, HN is not special.

Try rewriting history if you want, but the thread goes off-topic as soon as mekster suggests the project change the license, and your reply there only feeds into it. And it still doesn't explain how you can claim that your comment was meant to "agree" with gary-kim's.

> My reply is in this context, not in the parent's parent

The parent's parent at that point is... your comment, "For future versions, not past versions," which was off-topic.

> This is a very normal way to reply on the internet

Indeed, it's common for people to lose the plot in the comments section and then get defensive (and smug) while being wrong, e.g.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23250829

> mekster suggests the project change the license

When have I suggested the project change the license??? I only said it is possible.

Not sure why I'm getting downvoted, but this does not change the fact that yes, licenses can be changed. You disliking it does not make it wrong.

> They can change the license to a closed one from a certain version in the future.

You're right if and only if by "they" you mean every copyright holder whose contributions would exist in the future version (including, say, the contributions of the very person you're responding to). But if by "they" you mean the project leaders acting without the cooperation of everyone who holds copyright, then that's a no.

It was easy to tell it's almost one man's job if you look at the level of integrity the software has.

https://github.com/Requarks/wiki/graphs/contributors

Main guy commiting 600k lines and the second most committed guy 450 lines.

So yeah, it wouldn't take him a whole lot of time if he really wanted to change the license by removing all the others' commits and rewriting it by himself.

Also, what does AGPL has anything to do with keeping the license open sourced?

> Main guy commiting 600k lines and the second most committed guy 450 lines.

> So yeah, it wouldn't take him a whole lot of time if he really wanted to change the license by removing all the others' commits and rewriting it by himself.

Good point. I may try to get involved in its development as well to spread that out a little more.

> Also, what does AGPL has anything to do with keeping the license open sourced?

The AGPL requires that any code linked to it also be distributed with an AGPL license (the difference from the GPL being that hosting over a network counts as distribution). Every part of the project is technically linked to itself so if someone makes a change, no one else can use that change in the project under a different license.

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