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Comment by pvorb | Hacker News Reader

I think that by putting your software under AGPL the only effect you'll see is that it will be used less.

Unless you are using your software as a resume and need more Github stars to land you interviews, this is a fine result if it gets you more money. Companies like money more than they like clout - and it won't help them to have a billion users and then be undermined by "AWS Grafana" and slowly go out of business. I much prefer companies choosing the AGPL over going proprietary, using a franken-license or going out of business because Amazon sucked out all the oxygen.

Edit: it just occurred to me that opting for popularity over money is "paying" yourself with exposure.

Yep, already thinking about alternatives to Grafana in the long term now...

Why? If your software is already all available under permissive licenses, what does Grafana's new license require of you that you weren't already doing?

Oh nothing for now, and there's likely not going to be a viable alternative around for a while. But long-term, I don't see Grafana as part of the openly sharing ecosystem anymore, as with them being under the AGPL, but most other relevant OSS projects in the space being under permissive licenses, the whole idea of code sharing now goes out of the window (or rather, becomes one-way). I don't like the long-term implications of this for the ecosystem.

Maybe I want to keep my software under a permissive license? AGPL would also infect my code, no? And what if we're talking about proprietary code that doesn't have much to do with Grafana and only uses it for monitoring?

You can keep your software under a permissive license, as long as you ship it under the GPL.

You mean in binary form?

Your software will be effectively dual-licensed.

If you're only using Grafana, but not modifying it and re-distributing it, then the AGPL places no obligation on you.

You only have to license your own software as AGPL if it is a derivative work of another AGPL licensed program.

Thanks. Misunderstanding by me. I got the term "linking" wrong.

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