Comment by tzs
4 years ago
> What makes the AGPL unattractive? I thought it was basically just the GPL with a limitation on using the software to provide a SaaS product. You don't even have to contribute unpublished changes, right?
The things AGPL adds to GPL don't just affect people trying to do a SaaS offering of the program. If you modify it and users interact with it over a computer network you have to make source for your modified version available to them.
For example suppose it was software to add online ordering to restaurants. A restaurant modifies its copy so that it can be given the recipes of the items they sell and the modified software uses that information to allow customers to easily exclude items they might be allergic to or that violate their religious or ethical eating rules.
If that restaurant wants to use that as a competitive advantage over other restaurants they aren't going to want to have to give away their modifications, so aren't going to want to use AGPL software. They'd probably be fine with GPL software.
The kind of arguments you raise here have always, to me, basically looked like:
"I want something for nothing"
Or in more detail:
"I want to take something you created and agreed to share with me (on the proviso I like-wise share any changes as an exchange of value). I deem your software valuable to me but I won't be paying you money for it. I'll add something else to it so it fits my use-case. But, I refuse/object to sharing my changes because they're valuable."
It's not just sharing the changes. You have to be really careful how you integrate/modify the source. If you aren't you could accidentally expose proprietary information within those modifications. It's that kind of headache that means it is just easier to avoid.
> If that restaurant wants to use that as a competitive advantage over other restaurants they aren't going to want to have to give away their modifications, so aren't going to want to use AGPL software.
That's exactly the kinds of scenario the AGPL was written to avoid, right? The free software movement doesn't see software as a competitive advantage worth protecting; software is information that should be free.
To put it another way, if somebody releases software under a license that says "You may use and modify this for free, but you must contribute your changes back to the world," then your scenario seems perfectly fair.