AGPL it.
Big tech hates it and bans it outright. Which means it's the correct choice.
Big tech hates it and bans it outright. Which means it's the correct choice.
The problem they are trying to deal with is that they have some product that is useful on servers that they have released under a license like Apache or GPL, and they make their money by selling hosting and support, and big hosting companies like AWS start including the product for free as part of their own hosting offerings or start selling support.
AGPL would only discourage that if the big hosting company wanted to make modifications to the project and keep those private. But the threat to the project is not that say AWS is going to make a better version of the product. It is that they are going to make it more convenient and cheap for their hosting customers. They will either not need to make any changes for that, or the changes they make would probably not be useful to anyone else and releasing them won't bother them.
Look at MongoDB. That was under AGPL for several years and they switched away because it was not stopping cloud providers from competing with them on MongoDB hosting.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html
https://fossa.com/blog/open-source-software-licenses-101-agp...
The logic of the lawyers I’ve talked to (2 different companies on multiple occasions with different lawyers) is that the same wording that causes network access to count as “distribution” in the AGPL, also causes networked API access to count as a derived work.
It’s not all that crazy of an interpretation, IMO. My lawyers may suck and be overly cautious, but I’d wager this uncertainty is exactly why any sane company stays as far away as possible.
If its not a derived work under copyright law requiring a license, a license offer can’t transform it into a derived work requiring a copyright license.
One way I could do this is by completely implementing its wire-format API of MongoDB as a proxy server to my derived MongoDB, and offer that up as my SAAS.
I could use a defense that I’m not distributing MongoDB, I’m distributing my proxy service I wrote myself. It just happens to be that my proxy service talks to MongoDB to do its job, but according to you that’s not a derived work, because network access doesn’t count.
For AGPL to still protect MongoDB in this scenario, the proxy-plus-mongoDB combo would have to count as the derived work, and I think the only way to do this is to count any API access as deriving a work. I think this is at least how the lawyers I’ve talked to described it.
GPL has already established that runtime linking counts as a derived work. If what you’re saying is true about “not a derived work under copyright law requiring a license”, then I don’t understand why the LGPL exists.
AGPL's trigger on distribution or on allowing remote user interaction over a computer network.
> I could use a defense that I’m not distributing MongoDB, I’m distributing my proxy service I wrote myself
You aren't distributing either of them. When you run code on your server and people interact with it over the network that's not a distribution. If it was a distribution there would be no need for AGPL. GPL would be sufficient.
> It just happens to be that my proxy service talks to MongoDB to do its job, but according to you that’s not a derived work, because network access doesn’t count.
It's not a derivative work because it doesn't incorporate copyrighted elements of MongoDB (assuming you didn't actually copy code from MongoDB).
> For AGPL to still protect MongoDB in this scenario, the proxy-plus-mongoDB combo would have to count as the derived work, and I think the only way to do this is to count any API access as deriving a work.
AGPL would protect MongoDB in that scenario because you are allowing remote users to interact with MongoDB over a computer network. That this interaction happens to be taking place through a proxy shouldn't be relevant.
I think you’re misreading this part of my comment: MongoDB is (or at least, was) AGPL, and AGPL defines network access as distribution. So I would have to justify whether offering my proxy service to network access counts as distributing MongoDB, or if laundering it through a proxy works around this. Remember that in my example, I did modify mongoDB. But I’m not technically offering this modified mongoDB as a service, I’m offering my proxy as a service, and hoping that it doesn’t count as “distribution” of my modified mongoDB. (i.e. I’m not distributing mongo, I’m distributing my proxy, and my proxy is not AGPL.)
> AGPL would protect MongoDB in that scenario because you are allowing remote users to interact with MongoDB over a computer network. That this interaction happens to be taking place through a proxy shouldn't be relevant.
Well, that’s the thought experiment that my example is intended to provoke… it seems obvious that my dumb proxy is a way to work around the AGPL, but what if we tweak the example? What if I make a web UI where you type mongo commands and it gives you the result? (Still pretty obvious, no?) What if I make a simple dumb CRUD app that happens to use MongoDB? (Less obvious…) what if the CRUD app is itself an extremely thin wrapper, and although it doesn’t implement any MongoDB protocols, it leverages built-in mongoDB functionality for 99% of the logic?
The point is, it’s not hard to imagine a legal theory that says “if network access equals distribution, then network access equals a derived/combined work”. It’s the theory that the legal departments of several companies I’ve worked for have taken. And I’d argue that if you have a proprietary product that uses an AGPL service as part of the backend, you have a rather large reason to be worried.
To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying
Here's what the AGPL says about network access:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
No, whether runtime/dynamic linking (or even static linking) creates a derivative work under copyright (as is when, to the extent it does, such a use would nonetheless be fair use and still not require a license) is still a contentious topic, and AFAIK there are no cases strongly suggesting a general answer.
A license offering permission cannot itself resolve when the law requires such permission. Arguing that it can is like saying my offering terms of permission to use my home and claiming that they apply to use of the public street out front establishes that I own the street.
This is what Cosmos DB for Mongo DB is (wire format endpoint that talks to Msft’s own DB backend.)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/mongodb/in...
Would the details depend on the country? Like it might be one thing under US law, and another in another country?
Generally a bug tracker (SAAS or not) that uses a database does not need to link to the database unless the database is SQLite.
The AGPL adds a modification clause so that if you ever modify the code even if you do not distribute the application, you still have to share the code or at least link to the version of the source code that you use. The loophole that AGPL fixes is that there are ways to avoid distribution.
This AGPL/GPL virality urban legend should have ended years ago.
https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL
Use OSL3!
Then in section 13 it says that "your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge".
Isn't "scripts to control those activities quite vague? Under those terms wouldn't AWS Proton, IBM Schematics, Env0, Digger, Spacelift, etc. be required to open-source a very large part of their product as well?