It's not just big tech that hates AGPL. If Terraform was under AGPL a lot of companies might have to release their source code as AGPL too because of its virality. Where it stops is not exactly clear from the license.
AGPL is almost exactly the same as GPL except that SAAS counts as distribution. That's the entire purpose of the license — to preserve the copyleft protections of the GPL in a world where most software people use is hosted.
Except it’s not just hosting the covered work itself as SAAS that triggers a distribution, but any derived work. If you use (say) AGPL MongoDB in your SAAS bug tracker, your bug tracker now needs to be AGPL too. The virality doesn’t stop at hosting a SAAS MongoDB.
There is no such thing as "virality". It doesn't exist. The worst thing you can do is violate the license terms and not be allowed to use the software that is AGPL licensed.
And yet everyone understands what this term means when applied to software licensing. Pretty good argument that this word, in fact, exists and has a well defined meaning.
Not really. The lawyer Kyle Mitchell said of the agpl,“Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke.” Even lawyers have trouble understanding when its provisions are triggered.
The AGPL defines "Corresponding Source" as "all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities".
Then in section 13 it says that "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".
Isn't "scripts to control those activities quite vague? Under those terms wouldn't AWS Proton, IBM Schematics, Env0, Digger, Spacelift, etc. be required to open-source a very large part of their product as well?
chc|2 years ago
galenmarchetti|2 years ago
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jen20|2 years ago
eduction|2 years ago
https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL
Use OSL3!
Znafon|2 years ago
Then in section 13 it says that "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".
Isn't "scripts to control those activities quite vague? Under those terms wouldn't AWS Proton, IBM Schematics, Env0, Digger, Spacelift, etc. be required to open-source a very large part of their product as well?