Comment by p_l

2 years ago

Except neither GPL, nor AGPL, would do anything about the case described. And that's even with AGPL violating freedom 0 through its tangled text.

5 comments

p_l

frognumber 2 years ago

Did you even read the case described? From the article:

"Many of them have made minor or major modifications to the tools, and next to none provide the source to those modifications"

"I wanted to promote community contributions, not to have them monetized by other people who don't even provide the source to their modifications"

If you did, I don't think you understood it any better than the AGPL (or freedom zero). AGPL text is not tangled. It's a very-well written text, if that's the license scope you want.

The case described is the exact purpose of these license.

Footnote: I've released two major tools 95% under the AGPL (with a few minor components under more libertarian licenses). It was the right tool for that job.

p_l 2 years ago
Yeah, I've read the text.
And it's trivial to be compliant with AGPL in this case without any effective change to the behaviour or problems caused. Yes, there would be source code link somewhere, but it can take 0.01% of the SEO spam and be still compliant.
- frognumber 2 years ago
  
  There are plenty of examples of BSD-licensed code authors being burnt like this (including original ones from Berkeley, which were an impetus for the creation of the GPL; there were proprietary Unix systems built on top of volunteer-written code competing with the original systems).
  Can you point me to any concrete examples of authors of AGPL-licensed code being burnt like this?
  Circumventing the AGPL is trivial only on paper. It's hard in any human organization. In practice, parasites usually keep a long distance from the AGPL for reasons which will make sense to you if you sketch out what circumvention means in practice, what it means for org design, and the ROI there (not to mention the social signalling; not all parties are malicious).
  
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