Hacker News Reader

Comment by MadsRC | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know why companies don’t release under AGPL for everyone and then under a proprietary commercial license to themselves? Essentially dual-license it.

AGPL would dissuade Google and AWS from using it, and the commercial license would allow the licensee (themselves) to commercialize it?

View on HN

I thought so too and argued it in another thread a while ago. Others commented that apparently AGPL wasn't working to dissuade cloud providers enough for MongoDB and that is why they switched away from the model you described to a source available model.

One big reason we don't use AGPL at Sentry is that we want companies to be able to self-host individually (just not start a competing SaaS), and many have a blanket ban on AGPL.

> and many have a blanket ban on AGPL

Sounds like their own self-created problem.

Google has an organization-wide ban on using AGPL software, and they explain why here:

https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

I don’t get the blanket ban on AGPL-am I misunderstanding how attach-y it is?

For example, people seem to have the impression that if you host something like an AGPL email validation service that just has an API to request a check for an email and then connects via SMTP, which another service calls, that you “infect” your product that even uses that API.

I get that if you change the service and/or expose it publicly you have to make the changes available, but it seems misunderstood.

It might be: but as a creator of software one wants to make their users happy. We certainly do we at Sentry.

Even personally, years ago I relicensed all my GPL code to BSD/MIT because I wanted people to use my software. I’m not there to tell them that they are wrong about their license restrictions.

I expect we will soon start to see blanket bans on fair use licenses also. At least the functional software license referenced here. There is just too much great area and potential legal risk.

Sentry's experience suggests otherwise, as 10,000+ users from hobbyists up to FAANG companies have been using Sentry under Fair Source terms for five years now.

https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/widespread-use-of-a-f...

Read your claims and find them dubious.

Care to you explain why? Otherwise, the evidence the GP presented undermines your belief.

I didn’t see any evidence.

Does it work? (Do you know of big companies with a ban on AGPL are using your software with the fair source license?)

Another possibility is to make it available under several licenses: AGPL + free but restricted licence.

With 10,000+ self-hosted users[0] I assume that a number of them do, but I do not have solid receipts. I'm curious as well.

[0] https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/widespread-use-of-a-f...

https://opensource.org/delayed-open-source-publication via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184476

Reply on news.ycombinator.com