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Comment by sydthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Can you use GPL code internally (ie run your backend) if you never publish it?

I believe so, and this is why the AGPL was created:

> The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public.

> The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

So in theory, FAANG could make billions of a random person's GPL'd code and they'd never know.

Spoiler alert: vast majority of FAANG systems run on Linux, making billions for them.

Don't they also provide a lot of developer time through patches?

This is a common occurrence.

Modifications don't need to be shared back to the community if the software is used internally or behind a webserver.

amazon and google both created managed version of popular open source software like grafana and airflow and they are priced at a premium.

grafana is agplv3 but grafana the company has a deal with amazon to grant them a special licence

AWS did this with a bunch of stuff including Elastic.

https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS

The AGPL was created so that for-profit, not-free software can get free QA and put an open-source blurb on their landing page, be honest.

Let me add something to be clear. As I understand it, free software was always happy to let you or your company modify and use software for your own use. The philosophy was always about respecting the users of the software, so the licenses don't kick in until someone else uses it. The problem addressed by AGPL is that someone can use your software over a network connection without running it themselves: a loophole in GPL.

Yes, it is valid. Consider for example: If you are an embedded hardware company. You modify GCC to support a new target / platform. Then, you can compile C code and create binaries for your embedded hardware.

As long as GCC is not distributed, this is a perfectly valid use case for GPL'd software.

Less abstract: Facebook famously has massive internal patches for MySQL, which is GPL'd. And of course, Google has massive internal patches for Linux kernel, which is also GPL'd.

Yes. You only need to share your code (or send it if asked) to people who get your modified code. If nobody gets it, then nobody can ask you for it.

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