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Comment by okasaki | Hacker News Reader

If OpenSSL had been GPL licenced, this would have been public a long time ago.

Actually as long as they don't distribute the code, even under GPL they don't have to share it.

You mean the application? They need to distribute the code if they provide applications based on the code.

Yup. It's pretty common for open source to be used, abused, modified in house and not shared. Just look at Sergey Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs. [0] Further I've seen a shop deploy hundreds of thousands of CentOS nodes to avoid RHEL license fees. Doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of shops not funding FOSS they exploit like OpenSSH, etc. Most of them are stingy, demanding, greedy bastards.

[0] http://blog.garrytan.com/goldman-sachs-sent-a-brilliant-comp...

>Most of them are stingy, demanding, greedy bastards.

I'd go so far as to say "nearly all of them."

There's a few counterexamples, which is a good thing:

iXSystems does a lot of cool community work via FreeNAS, PC-BSD and FreeBSD.

Github (Ruby), thoughtbot (Ruby), Google (Go, Python), Dropbox (Python), AT&T (C++, Ruby), Zurb (Ruby, Foundation), Twitter (Ruby, Scala), ...

missing a bunch and some platforms too.

Also part of the reason I grabbed the eject handles on enterprise devops consulting. Although I did manage to fight and win open sourcing changes to net-ldap so that it worked with A-D.

Further I've seen a shop deploy hundreds of thousands of CentOS nodes to avoid RHEL license fees

Such decisions often happen at the engineer level, and it isn't for money management reasons, but rather "avoid purchasing and requisition BS, followed by licensing compliant BS" reasons.

GNU Affero license changes that: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

"It [Affero GPL License] has one added requirement: if you run the program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the program that it's running."

And if OpenSSL had been licensed with a GNU Affero license, we'd all be running something else.

AGPL is not the same as plain GPL. The vast majority of the code with a licence from the GPL family is not AGPL, but GPLv2, GPLv3 or LGPL.

I understand the reasoning behind AGPL and on the surface it seems like a good idea, to stop the parasitic behaviour many have towards FOSS. But there are many situations where you have very legit reasons to avoid it. Even in this case, AGPL would put you in a delicate position where you need to immediately disclose the changes you made without respecting the non-disclosure period for mitigation.

It's a licence that tries to solve the problem of the GPL going obsolete when many companies no longer distribute software, but rather services based on the software (like Google or Facebook) and they can basically get away with not giving anything back at all to the community work they built upon. But this is very hard to regulate and as a result AGPL is often so cumbersome that AGPL-licensed code is strongly avoided, and it's also extremely hard to enforce when the service simply doesn't release any code or software.

It is not true that AGPL is incompatible with responsible disclosure. Responsible disclosure timelines mean that the source code would be published long before anyone had time to complain about the source not being available.

Enforcement is hard, but AGPL is strictly stronger than GPL which doesn't evenninvitr enforcement on sharing server code.

Yes, many companies avoid AGPL software. That isn't a problem for AGPL-leaning authors, that's the point.

Even if (probably) no one has time to complain about it, you'd still technically be violating the license by withholding code, right?

Probably. AGPL says you need to "provid[e] access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software", and GPLv3 also seems to require digital distribution of software to include immediate source access. GPLv2's source requirement, on the other hand, can be satisfied by a "written offer" to provide the source no matter how the binary is distributed; I think this is (along with apathy) how Apple gets away with taking months to publish GPLv2 sources.

That exposes whoever does this to uncharted legal territory.

There are many reasons why AGPL is used in extremely few projects of any relevance, compared to other GPL licences, or BSD, MIT, etc.

I severely question the enforceability of the AGPL. If they're not distributing they don't need to accept the license in the first place.

So does this mean users don't need to accept EULAs?

EULAs are largely a farce but in theory you have to accept the EULA to accept the software. As far as I know GPL/AGPL comes in at a different point entirely.

Please research what the "L" in "GPL" means.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

Software is protected by copyright by default, meaning you can't make a copy. A license is a limited waiver of copyright that grants permission to make a copy, if the conditions of the license are met.

You're not the one making a copy when you're just accepting the software to run.

Usage licenses are enforceable. At least in the US for sure, and the DMCA builds on that.

Now, to prove that someone is running AGPL software and that they have modified it, that seems pretty hard in many scenarios.

AGPL is based on modification rather than public performance or use. You don't have permission to modify copyrighted things by default so if you do modify, then you either comply with the AGPL or violate copyright law.

You can modify copyrighted things, you just can't in general copy your modified version.

Because a number of court cases have sided with the interpretation that "copying bits into RAM for execution" is itself governed by copyright law, in practice you wouldn't be able to use your modified software without breaking copyright. This is why software licenses are "needed" -- lacking some kind of limited license to make copies, execution of software isn't permitted.

But it's still GPL and anyone who works at the company is free to share it. Whereas with Apache they can just make the entire thing proprietary and forbid sharing. Granged, we don't know that that's what happened here. Maybe their version was still Apache licenced and nobody bothered to share it at any point.

No, this is incorrect. Just because the original code is GPL, doesn't automatically make it legal for any modifications to be released to the public as GPL without the copyright owner's consent. (In this case, the company owns the copyright.)

Modifications made to non-distributed GPL code are not automatically GPL. Only distribution of code derived from GPL-licensed code requires a GPL license for that derivative. But even on publication a modification/derivation of GPL-licensed code is not automatically GPL. It can also just be copyrighted code published in violation of the GPL.

So, it's also not true that "any employee of the company can publish the modications to the GPL-licensed code".

IANAL, but I don't think that's how it works. The GPL allows the licensee to redistribute the code and so on. But if you're working for a company, you are not the licensee, the company is (in the same way the company owns the copyright on your work, not you).

Otherwise, the AGPL would never have seen the light of day.

And Akamai would probably not be using OpenSSL if it were GPL (maybe because of a business decision within Akamai, or just because OpenSSL would never have become so popular).

Why not? They're using Linux and it's GPL. Undoubtedly they have made kernel modifications as well.

They're not distributing the code outside of their company, so the source license in this case is entirely irrelevant.

We could make a different argument if they were using AGPL'd code...

They run FreeBSD don't they ..?

Based on job descriptions, it would appear they are mostly a linux shop with some solaris. [0]

[0] http://jobs.akamai.com/search/?q=linux&locationsearch=

I think this is a widespread misunderstanding about GPL, and I am afraid it is the reason why businesses typically have a GPL-aversion.

I haven't worked for Akamai for more than a decade, but at that time, I can assure you that not only were there lawyers who thoroughly understood the GPL, but there were many, many engineers who would not have remained silent for a breach of the terms. Assuming that culture to have continued -- and I see no reason why it would not -- Akamai should be up there with Red Hat in terms of license compliance.

I haven't been there for almost two years, even then, I'm sure most engineers wouldn't have stood silent if an OSS license was being violated... unless their managers made them afraid for their jobs and careers for doing so. Oh, and getting permission to submit a simple patch made to an otherwise completely GPL'd piece of software was always an exercise in frustration. Send the necessary info to legal. Wait 3-6 months for them to say no. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was pretty damn bad while I was there.

Now, my current employer... Email your manager: "I wrote this entirely in-house and would like to open-source it." Manager: "OK, let's talk to Legal" Legal: "OK, get at least one other person to verify that it doesn't contain any trade secrets and sign this." Upload to github. Done.

And submitting patches upstream - just a matter of code-review and sending it out. Now that's OSS-friendly.

Can't distribute, actually. We have internal combinations of GPL'd software and OpenSSL, which has Eric Young's advertising requirement. The GPL forbids us from distribution that combination with the extra requirement, and OpenSSL's license forbids us from distribution without that requirement.

So we're stuck: we avidly use and consume free and open source software, but can only give back code by carving off bits here and there.

Some GPL project have added an OpenSSL exception to their licenses specifically allowing OpenSSL to be combined with their project.

I think they (businesses) often pick OpenSSL exactly because it's not GPL licensed so it's kind of chicken and egg

It would have to be the Affero GPL actually, since they just run it on their servers and don't distribute the software.

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