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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like it's working as intended: preventing services from restricting the rights of their users to run, modify & share source code.

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This! I am quite sure that most projects, in exchange for some negligible part of Google's money, would be more than happy to offer the software under a different license. My guess is that it's the difficulty of ensuring that the new license terms are not breached (the license would need to be checked by lawyers, approved,...) that is the real deal breaker.

Not that I sympathise with Google here, they can afford to give something back to FOSS (not just when it advances their agenda).

IMO, the goal of open source licenses is to encourage more usage of open source. If AGPL is preventing companies from using it, then it is accomplishing the opposite.

Every license has different goals - that's the whole point of having different licenses.

The goal of this license is to encourage more companies to contribute to open source, not to encourage usage.

A license is a legal document that specific under what conditions that the author allow others to use their software. Nothing more, nothing less. Open source licenses and free software licenses are standardization of common goals and conditions, and encourage usage is one such goal, but its not the only goal. Some authors want more like share-alike, attribution, and fair competition.

I agree with you. I am pretty sure the AGPL exists so that you get the "warm fuzzies" of "open source", but the company that wrote the software can still profit from it as though the source wasn't available. It is also administratively easier than making a "hobbyist edition" for people that want to screw around with the software in their free time in the hopes that they someday make money with it and buy the full version. (Also, in the event that you do license the software and need to make a small customization, it's administratively easier. Just edit the code and you're done, as opposed to the company having to set up a meeting with your team, looping in the sales engineer to see how much to charge you, then having a year of weekly status update meetings to see how your feature is proceeding.)

The problem I have is that I think truly free software is relatively unsustainable. Look at Docker's financials after basically revolutionizing how software is distributed and deployed. Look at big projects like Kubernetes; do you think you would convince investors to fund a project with a pitch like "we're going to give it all away for free with no encumbrances". Nope. It only works when you already made money from writing proprietary software. The AGPL attempts to be a middle ground, which I do respect. I am personally afraid to touch it. So are many other people.

AGPL is not an Open Source license, but a Free Software license.

Its goal is not to help corporations, but to give end users freedom to control software they use.

>AGPL is not an Open Source license, but a Free Software license.

No, this is wrong. The OSI has the AGPL in its list of approved licenses. https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0

No, this is not wrong (but you're not wrong either).

When discussing the goals behind AGPL, it definitely shouldn't be described as Open Source license (although it technically is one), but a Free Software one, since the whole difference between those two terms (highlighting the political issue as opposed to technical one) is actually relevant to the intention behind the license.

The goal behind licenses written by FSF is to ensure that distributors of your code do not restrict freedoms of the users that the license guarantees them. If you think it's about "encouraging more usage of open source", you clearly miss the point of copyleft licenses.

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