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Comment by tm-guimaraes | Hacker News Reader

It's a different restriction. AGPL lets you do anything as long as it is just as Free (as in freedom), while these kind of license only let you do things that don't compete with whatever is the current copyright owner business is doing. And business tend to change over time, and it might be simple to be clear to a court if you are competing or not.

"Do whatever you want as long as you keep it Free Software" vs "do whatever you want as long as we believe you are not taking customers for us"

As usual, RMS was right, and I recommend reading the Free Software vs Open Source essay, unfortunately both names make it easy to misinterpret their respective fundamental idea (Free can and is usually interpreted as "gratis", and open as available/published/shared)

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I agree with your sentiment, but I'd like to clarify the following, IMO:

> It's a different restriction.

AGPL doesn't impose restrictions. It provides guarantees (that modified versions will remain AGPL and therefore open source for everybody).

> AGPL lets you do anything as long as it is just as Free (as in freedom)

By the very definition of open source software, you can do pretty much what you want, for your own usage. If you want to distribute (e.g. provide a service) with a modified version, then you need to guarantee that modified version retains the right that the original version granted.

Sorry but you are just changing angles and discussing semantics.

Let me do the same for the quasi "open source" licenses:

Elastic license doesn't impose restrictions. It provides guarantees (that modified versions will not take business from you).

The only way you guarantee something, is by restricting something else. AGPL restricts distribution.

> Elastic license doesn't impose restrictions.

It does. It explicitly forbids usage. FOSS doesn't impose any restrictions on usage.

Fundamentally different things. I encourage you to review the four freedoms of Free Software [1] and see how AGPLv3 provide them all while Elastic License does not.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

> FOSS doesn't impose any restrictions on usage.

It does impose restrictions on distribution (which is one kind of usage) which was my point.

I'm fully aware of the four freedoms, I'm fully aware that elastic is not compliant. I'm fully aware that elastic is not open source by OSD, nor Free as per FSF. I was just stating that both impose restrictions, they are just of a different kind. I'm not advocating for elastic (i do not like non-free licenses), please do not misunderstand.

>> Elastic license doesn't impose restrictions. > It does. It explicitly forbids usage.

Please read that statement in its context. I was just doing the same thing you did. Swapping restrictions for guarantees. There is no such thing as a guarantee without restring something.

> AGPL restricts distribution.

It does not restrict distribution, instead of restricts the ability to limit/restrict distribution. Quite a significant difference.

Also, fundamentally, one (AGPL) is putting the freedoms of the code and its users over those of the authors whereas the other (ELv2) puts the freedoms and interests of its authoring business over the freedom of the code and it's users.

> It does not restrict distribution, instead of restricts the ability to limit/restrict distribution. Quite a significant difference.

semantics. Saying i cannot distribute something without providing the same freedoms given to me is still restricting what/how I distribute.

> Also, fundamentally, one (AGPL) is putting the freedoms of the code and its users over those of the authors whereas the other (ELv2) puts the freedoms and interests of its authoring business over the freedom of the code and it's users.

Yes. I fully agree. It's not like I haven't said something similar right but it's just discussing semantics at this point. So I'll stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34530039

I despise licenses like Elastic's and wished SaaS would just use AGPL.

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