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Comment by peppermint_gum | Hacker News Reader

This person's entire argument is that the (A)GPL is "viral", and therefore companies have no right to relicense the software they own the copyright for, and they should be sued.

He doesn't quote any specific part of the (A)GPL that supports his argument (frankly, I doubt he's ever read it), he just keeps throwing out the buzzword "viral" as if it means anything. He clearly doesn't understand the concept of CLAs and copyright law in general.

This is a very bad post, and I'm surprised it made the front page.

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He is clearly wrong on multiple counts.

"If the source code originally used AGPL, isn’t it still contractually obligated to ensure those rights to its users, including any new source code added to it?"

The answer is clearly no. The GPL is not a contract NOR does it contain any such obligation.

"It doesn’t matter that you own the copyright on the software, you can’t revoke the rights on the code that was licensed under its terms."

You cannot revoke the license, but if you hold the copyright to code you can dual license or license modifications under a different license.

"This is a very bad post, and I'm surprised it made the front page. "

An illustration of how little copyright law is understood by developers. I have seen lots similar things in the past. A bit unfair to pick on old stuff that the author probably knows better about by now, but this always stood out as a good example: https://jacobian.org/2009/jul/13/gpl-questions/ - twenty questions, the answers to most of which are fairly obvious or easy to find out.

"Viral" is the word Steve Ballmer used to describe the GPL as a negative thing.

It remains that the owner of the copyright can release the software under any terms they deem fit. Including changing their mind about what license to use for future versions. The license is, well, a license for anyone that's not the copyright owner; it's absolutely non-binding on the copyright owner themselves.

Has this been tested in court?

I also don't think "this is a license for anyone not the copyright holder" is accurate. The license specifically prohibits removal of the license you can't "dual license" GPL code.

You can license code under GPL, and you can license the same initial code under a second license, but going forward those two pieces of code are forked. You can't then ship GPL modifications to the other license simply because you have the copyright ownership of the modifications, well, in fact you can, but that requires the GPL license to infect the other source code. You being the sole developer in all of this is irrelevant.

I think this comes down to the answer of this question:

Can you rescind a GPL license?

If not, even as the copyright holder, then no, you as the copyright holder don't have rights over the code moving forward.

That was part of the purpose and intention behind this license.

Sorry, but you are wrong.

> I also don't think "this is a license for anyone not the copyright holder" is accurate. The license specifically prohibits removal of the license you can't "dual license" GPL code.

The terms in the GPL applies only to the licensee. Unsurprisingly the copyright holder still holds the copyright and is not bound to the term of the license.

> Can you rescind a GPL license?

Nobody is rescinding the license here. Whoever got the source code under the GPL license will keep having the rights to _that_ source code. What you call rescind, is in fact licensing the existing code _also_ under different terms, _and_ new modifications only under the new terms.

> you can't "dual license" GPL code.

Yes you can, and lots of very popular open source software have done so, including Mozilla, MySQL and QT. RMS also says it is fine: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions.

> You being the sole developer in all of this is irrelevant.

It's the fundamental point.

If you own the copyright to project A and you own the copyright of some patches to project B then you can combine them however you like and distribute them under whatever licences you like.

GPL governs distribution. As the copyright owner you aren't "distributing" those patches to yourself, so the GPL doesn't apply.

[0] https://www-archive.mozilla.org/mpl/relicensing-faq

[1] https://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/oem/

[2] https://www.qt.io/qt-licensing

That's not a very charitable take for a message on a short form platform. A company like Terraform may have had to make harder decisions or never be able to do a rug pull if more of the community refused to submit code under CLA or non-GPL style licenses.

It seems like a fair take to me. Certainly plenty of companies, HashiCorp included, would have fewer choices about how to license future code if they made different decisions regarding contributions. But something like:

> I wonder if the community has grounds to sue any of these companies who are ditching the AGPL in favor of proprietary, source-available licenses, especially under “third-party beneficiary contract” legal theories, like @conservancy did in their suit against Vizio.

> If the source code originally used AGPL, isn’t it still contractually obligated to ensure those rights to its users, including any new source code added to it?

seems to indicate rather strongly that the original poster doesn't understand the AGPL terms, CLAs, or the nuances of contract litigation. At least OP recognises that at least enough to ask a question about it, but I don't think "random questions I thought up about reasonably well-settled law in Twitter thread form" makes a good post.

It seems like a perfectly good topic to me (and I'm not sure why we would expect more in an OP than in a ask HN topic).

The OP may not understand why but it is very common to have gaps when relicensing because collecting CLAs, etc, is often allowed to slip to the minimum for the current license terms.

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