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Comment by temp667 | Hacker News Reader

Correct - you would need to open source your entire app (or at least a strong arguement can be made that you must do so).

"The primary risk presented by AGPL is that any product or service that depends on AGPL-licensed code, or includes anything copied or derived from AGPL-licensed code, may be subject to the virality of the AGPL license. "

Almost all larger places have very strict bans on evening touching AGPL -

https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

The contributors can of course license commercially, so this has made it a popular sort of "shared source" type license - you can look at the code, but can't use it in your own projects unless they are open source too or pay for the commercial license.

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> you can look at the code, but can't use it in your own projects unless they are open source too or pay for the commercial license.

Please, stop spreading ridiculous FUD.

You can use copylefted code in your own projects without any restriction. It is only when you distribute this copylefted code (e.g., by letting users run it in your computer) that you need to publish your modifications to it. And then, this is only relevant when you have modified the copylefted code; otherwise you just need to distribute code that is public elsewhere, which is a non-issue.

> It is only when you distribute this copylefted code (e.g., by letting users run it in your computer) that you need to publish your modifications to it.

I don't know if that was a typo, but letting users run the software on your computer, isn't 'distribution' in the usual sense. What you said sounds true of the GPL, but doesn't give a complete account of the AGPL.

From the FSF: [0]

> The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

by "your computer" i meant your server. It's the same thing, isn't it?

Yes, but that isn't distributing copylefted code. If it were, the GPL and the AGPL would be the same licence.

> this is only relevant when you have modified the copylefted code

If I write a program that uses a GPL licensed library but never modify that library, it still infects my entire program. I have created a derivative work under copyright law. It doesn't matter that I never modified the original code that I received.

So if my proprietary SaaS web app makes use of an unmodified AGPL licensed library in order to perform a single computation ...

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