However, I still believe AGPL is a better alternative in most cases and functionally prevents large enterprises from touching your code due to typical internal policies.
This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.
You should be vocal against CLAs, not the AGPL. CLAs with any license is a risk of seeing the code closed up.
The FSF pretends this isn't true by pretending that some uses are actually redistribution. However, this is too clever by half. Redistribution has a well-settled meaning, and allowing interaction over a network—unless it involves downloading the software itself—does not meet that definition.
Are you under the impression that a restriction can only take the form of a blanket prohibition?
HN is for intellectual curiosity. Not gaslighting ideological battles.
Conditions on freedom are restrictions. Something doesn't have to be an outright prohibition to be an impingement on freedom. It's dishonest to pretend like anything short of a prohibition is unrestricted freedom.
In order to have that discussion, we need a specific example of such a restriction! You've evaded my request for one three times now, so the only conclusion at this point is that you can't come up with one because it just doesn't exist.
The whole piece is about CLAs, the AGPL has absolutely nothing to do with signing over your copyrights. See Canonical for the same behaviour without the AGPL, the AGPL just requires that you allow your users to also see the code they are using, even if it is accessed over a network.
> Many, like Google, have flat out banned the AGPL.
Yeah, but that's because Google hates sharing what they have built on the shoulders of giants.
People are welcome to use and host AGPLed software under its own FOSS terms. If people don't want to do that, and want to pay for alternative terms, that is also a sign that the license is effective. There's no point in restricting things people don't want to do. The GPL restricts something people want to do: make proprietary software. The AGPL restricts something people want to do: host software without distributing the source at all.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I love open source. But I also think words and intent matters.
I don't really 'win' by attacking customers/users that use the AGPL.
Freedom 0 the freedom to use the work
Freedom 1 the freedom to study the work
Freedom 2 the freedom to copy and share the work with others
Freedom 3 the freedom to modify the work, and the freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative works
If Amazon tomorrow turns around and open sources everything that is a derivative work of the code they ever used, I would be more than happy, even proud if they used my software. Today any company which doesn’t deny their users the core software freedoms is already free to do so.
This is not a “hack” to be maliciously compliant OSS; this is the spirit of open source.
Why do you think the GPL has the virality clause in the first place?
Edit: a perhaps reductive, but hopefully instructive summary: MIT/BSD guarantee freedoms of the software developers, GPL guarantees freedoms of the software users.
You are free to choose which you prefer, but they're quite explicit choices, and the AGPL is absolutely squarely in the spirit of the GPL.
(Now if you had said you take issue with the tivoization clause, on the other hand... :) :))
believe it or not this is not actually true! the corporations who disallow agpl do so because their lawyers (correctly) tell them that agpl-licensed software has not been adequately tested in relevant courts of law, and that by including agpl-licensed software they are opening themselves up to unknown/unbounded legal liability/risk!
"the spirit of open source" has nothing to do with anything!
the more you know
Don’t like the agpl wording, but agree with the spirit? Ok, you have the lawyers, write a better agpl that abides by the same spirit and which you trust.
But: nothing. And waiting won’t change that. It may be also true, but it’s just excuse at this point. They’re not chomping at the bit to introduce networked virality of software freedom into their platforms.
you're also completely missing the point. it's not on anyone to "fix" the agpl, the point is about whether the agpl as it exists is usable in practice. answer, no, not really. "software freedom" doesn't even enter the discussion.
Corporations are free to do as they choose. They can choose not to use AGPL software. That's ok, they don't owe anyone anything (arguable but let's go with it), and I'd have no leg to stand on.
But that's not what happened here. Look at the quote that kicked off this thread:
> Shame on the people who recommend the AGPL to effectively be an OSI-approved source-available license.
> This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.
Note "Shame" and "the spirit of open source." Someone kicked off this thread painting authors of AGPL software as going against the spirit of open source for promoting a license which they know big corporations shun.
At that point it's a very different context. Remember how corporations don't owe anyone anything? Neither do free software devs. That entire comment is completely wrong, and the entire thread which followed only exists in its context. Not outside. And inside that context, it is absolutely valid to talk about the spirit of open source, to talk about what "should", etc, because that's the context introduced by the comment itself.
"Software freedom" doesn't just "enter" the discussion--it is the discussion.
> the corporations who disallow agpl only do so because they want to comply in a way that is against the spirit of open source
in isolation
"the spirit of open source" is not anything that can even be evaluated by any corporate legal team, much less is it anything that can be complied-with (or not-complied-with) in any kind of way
but i guess we talkin' past each other