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Comment by blip54321 | Hacker News Reader

No, I think you're misreading the case. I think the intent of the clause, which the court reaffirmed, is:

- You develop didibusDB

- I enhance it. I add a clause. (note: as an enhancer, I'm the licensor)

- Alice grabs it from me. She can just remove the clause.

This clause avoids litigation for step 3. Otherwise, for Alice to do this, YOU would have to sue. This way, the power rests with Alice.

For the "original licensor" case, the license referred to here would have been AGPL+CC. I'm not sure of a legal argument to say I can't distribute something under a modified license. The only error was false advertising -- referring to it as an AGPL or open source or whatever other license, which the court found to be true.

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Unless you have copyright on all the code, you're a licensee on at least parts of the code.

So while you're indeed the licensor of your enhancements, at the same time you're a licensee of the original code.

The nuance is a little bit more complex. Let's say I run an AGPL+CC project:

- I become a licensee of code under AGPL if I bring in AGPL code from an external project. Downstream can remove my clause.

- I don't become a licensee if I have an adequately strong CLA in place, and only accept contributions under the CLA.

- I become a licensee of the code if you make a PR to my project without a CLA. However, you're contributing code under AGPL+CC. Downstream cannot remove my clause.

That's my read on both the court ruling and the intent of the AGPL.

It'd be crazy for a court to rule that you can't modify a license. Once you have AGPL+CC, that's a new license (and it's not open source or compatible with most other sharealike licenses).

That's what I understood the court said yes, which I think makes sense. The original licensor is the one who dictates the rules of use, even to enhancers. But the OSI article implied this wasn't the intent of the FSF when they wrote the license, and that apparently the clause in the AGPL was intended to dictate the terms of the original licensor, somehow in that they couldn't add more terms to it.

Yeah, that argument makes no sense. The FSF is way smarter than that.

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