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Comment by somethingwitty1 | Hacker News Reader

That starts off with "I'm not a lawyer". So as much as people think they understand it, lawyers have to read the actual text of the entire license and interpret what could happen in a court case. With the vagueness of the license, it isn't unreasonable for lawyers to read it and say "there is risk here. if this goes in front of the wrong judge, we could be in trouble"

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> there is risk here. if this goes in front of the wrong judge, we could be in trouble

This is it.

I find it a compelling argument there is tremendous risk to AGPL if Google says so. They not only talk the talk but walk the walk: Google just indemnified AI (C) without limits putting 1.7 trillion dollars behind that statement. The same company said "nah, we are afraid of AGPL".

The AGPL is risky for Google because Google is in the business of making and hosting proprietary software.

I wonder truly, is there any company above say 300 employees which does not have custom software.

The issue isn't that they have custom software. The issue is that their business model relies on their custom software being proprietary, and that's true of way fewer companies.

There's something much worse than "I'm not a lawyer" and that is "I'm not YOUR lawyer" -- you can practically assume that if you are reading a document produced by a lawyer you're not paying for, it is because it's trying to influence/scare you to act against your best interests (and into the lawyer's employers'). And FUD is a technique which is well defined in the handbook.

I've read plenty of documents from lawyers I don't pay that were not trying to influence or scare me. It would be really strange to assume their documents were. And when it comes to interpreting legal documents (what is being discussed here), "I'm not a lawyer" is far worse than "I'm not your lawyer".

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