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Comment by 2Gkashmiri | Hacker News Reader

Totally bollocks.

This is pure fud. Nothing else.

AGPL DOES NOT restrict ability to be used internally. Agpl does NOT restrict selling software as it is.

Agpl does not restrict using agpl software with proprietary software.

Only thing that agpl prevent is, IF YOU MODIFY AGPL SOFTWARE, YOU HAVE TO GIVE SOURCE CODE TO USERS. Your modifications. Thats it.

AGPL DOES NOT MANDATE upstreaming modifications. You can do it or you cannot. Your choice. Others can choose to upstream or fork or Downstream your modifications

What you are confusing with is the fud google spreads about agpl. They dont touch it because if they modify code they have to release it but they don't for reasons known to them.

Again, AGPL is NOT viral like SSPL which is like AGPL but on steroids.

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Please make your substantive points without fulminating or calling names. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. In addition, it's in your own interest because it will make your argument much more persuasive.

Edit: we've had to ask you this at least once before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32387908. Can you please stick to the rules when posting here? We have to ban accounts that won't, and I don't want to ban you.

And the weirdest part about the complaint is that this is an application your employees could run on their computers to write documents. It's not like the discussion is about a library or package to be included in the product you're shipping.

Yeah. I challenge people here to break my claims down point by point from agpl license.

I could be wrong but let's see how wrong I really am.

With large companies with 100s of partners and contractors what is internal is fluid particularly over the network. So am sure they don't want to use such as a library.

Though I am not lawyer/license expert so that fact may be irrelevant more so using it as desktop app. But perception matters, if Goog/MSFT are not using it, a startup also won't risk using them lest some auditor flags it in next round of funding particularly if alternative is few dollars a month.

The software in question is an end product, like microsoft office.

>lest some auditor flags it in next round of funding

i am an auditor and a laywer, so what is there to flag? please enlighten me.

This is the AGPL, not the GPL. The AGPL may be based on the GPL but it is different, and has nothing to do with the Free Software Foundation.

Basically, you if you provide this software as a service to your customers, you are required to let them access the source code and modifications.

>Basically, you if you provide this software as a service to your customers, you are required to let them access the source code and modifications.

the source code of "this" software and any modifications you made. so.... whats the problem?

The AGPLv3, which OnlyOffice uses, is a FSF license.

Be is it may, there are companies like iText (Java PDF library) which are actively harassing companies which use their software, even if the use is perfectly legal (e.g. internal server software). So it's not only Google spreading FUD but companies which try to use AGPL as a trojan horse and then strong-arm users into commercial licenses.

The problem with AGPL is, that the definitions are very open to interpretation. What is a network, how many systems do have to be between to the end user and the software component to still count as "interacting over a network", etc.

So I would also not recommend to use AGPL in your company...

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