Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.
They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider.
GPL would have been a better initial license, and AGPL would have been the next logical step to ensure that changes that hosted services make can come back to the original version.
I'm not entirely sure what they were hoping to get by making an extremely permissive licensed piece of software, but competition doesn't appear to be it.
This is an overly negative take. At the end of the day, they are still providing software and the source code free to use for practically every purpose except directly competing with them.
That's still altruistic while also being sensible in the real world rather than an ideal.
You might say, "well wouldn't that be most of what people might want to do with it?" And you might be right, but so what? No one is entitled to build their business on the back of someone else's work, not without their permission anyway.
That certainly makes software like this no longer Free Software. But I'm not religious about it, and maybe that's ok sometimes.
(It also runs afoul of several parts of the OSI Open Source Definition, but maybe that's ok too.)
This is incorrect.
https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/master/LICEN...
> You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality.
It does not make the distinction around a financial transaction.
Some people pick the AGPL because the license itself acts like garlic to commons destroying IP vampires and are disappointed that those vampires still found a way to drink their IP milkshake.
Has nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with not wanting to be taken advantage of for free labor and IP by powerful entities that would deny them a glass of water if they were dying from thirst.
The conflict is entirely between the original developer wanting to be the sole service provider and the open source license that lets people host the software themselves. The software as a service business model is the problem here, not AWS hosting.
Technically true, but in practice almost every tech company forbids GPL code. I bet if you re-read your employment contract closely you'll find that you agreed not to introduce any GPL code into the company's codebases.
(Edited for clarity).
Just using Linux is not enough to say anything built with it is a combined product in the eyes of the GPL, the license is pretty specific about what it considers a derivative work.
For example, you can ship closed source apps and OS on top of Linux so long as you respect the license.
Those are pretty rare when it comes to the GPL, a lot of hardware companies do not comply with it fully, in some way. Vizio is being made an example of at the moment:
Of course a company must forbid copy/paste of GPL code, because that would GPL the codebase and that's hardly what they want. But one should ask the Legal office (and/or other offices) about adding any MIT, BSD or proprietary library: credit must be given (how?), licenses must be available and compatible with the way the software is distributed. There are so many licenses out there, everything should be vetted.
Of course everything should be vetted, but lawyers have canned advice about common licenses they see often — GPL, MIT, etc.
[1] https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...
(AGPL, however, was nearly impossible to get permission to use)
Some companies subscribe to FUD (aka lawyers covering their ass) and forbid use of AGPL, GPL and sometimes even LGPL software outright even though they allow proprietary sofware that has even more restrictions, but the big elephant in the room that is usually cited for these open source to "proprietary but we still want the publicity of open source" license changes (AWS) is not one of those companies that put fear over profit.
I don't see how, there is nothing in the spirit of FOSS by doing that.
From the license at <https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/998e87263248...>:
"You may not provide the Software as a hosted or managed service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality"
Given that the exclusive purpose of the Software in question is to implement a managed service for its users' hosting needs, I'm having trouble understanding how anyone could take the position that this is "mostly in the spirit of FOSS".
The license might as well say, "You just can't use this."
"Bear Blog has been built as a platform and not as an individual blog generator. It is more like Substack than Hugo. Due to this it isn't possible to individually self-host a Bear Blog."
"It isn't possible" is obviously not true but a plain reading of both that combined with the license would suggest you can't use bear at all for anything.
Where does it say that?
Any examples when AGPL was used successfully by competitors? Typically every company prohibits using this licence.
So if you had some AGPL OCR tool you were using, you could use it, but not in a way the user sees that text. Generate audio from it and expose the sound? Probably fine.
And that you can comply with that completely, run the software, and then have a proxy in front that strips that offer without violating the letter of the license.
And if that theory works I think "substantial features" of the code could be directly (but for the indirection of that proxy) exposed.
> However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
and
> Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License.
"Convey" is the key word there. You _must_ convey the license. Stripping it out, is not conveying it. Why is it automatic? Because under the AGPL, the license is a part of the work itself. You cannot remove it or modify it, without breaking the license, and thus having no right to modify it in the first place.
You didn't convey a covered work by using it to respond to a response or anywhere else in my hypothetical - and indeed that part of the license exactly matches the GPLv3. The relevant portion of the license is rather
> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
Yeah, I'm not continuing this convetsation.
I know what section of the license is relevant to network requests, why the section of license you cited is not, and that a proxy stripping offers of source does not seem to violate the text (though it certainly violates the spirit) of the license. I do not know how a court would react to such an attempt.
I agree that I'm done with this conversation though.