Comment by ethin

3 days ago

Wouldn't that license also violate the AGPL? I mean, it does say, in section 7:

> All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. If a license document contains a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying

So, my interpretation is that I am free to license it under the AGPL; there is no "well, we might decide to do that", and I can strip all conditions they place upon me and comply only with the AGPL, and legally there is nothing they can do about it.

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ethin

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KolmogorovComp  3 days ago

yes, but that's not what happen here. this part of the AGPL is there to avoid people adding more restrictions, but here mattermost is loosening up the restrictions.

> > We promise that we will not enforce the copyleft provisions in AGPL v3.0 against you if your application ... [set of conditions]

  • ethin  3 days ago

    I mean... I don't really see how they are. Technically they are but at the same time they aren't, because the set of conditions make the loosening of the AGPL a conditional thing. Which to me sounds like a violation of the AGPL because it's a further restriction: "We will (not) hold the AGPL against you... As long as you do these things..." I... Really don't think the AGPL was written to be... Abused? That way.

    • mappu  3 days ago

      You can see the spirit of what they're going for also with the MIT binaries - that's also like saying the whole project is AGPL, but a loosening for using it as-is.

      Given their goals seem to be

      - Permissive use without modification, even in combined works ("MIT binaries"); but

      - Copyleft with modification, including for the Affero "network hole", or commercial terms

      could you suggest a clearer license option? AGPL triggers copyleft across combined works, LGPL doesn't cover the network hole, GPL has both problems. Their goals seem really reasonable, honestly, there should be a simple answer. It seems messy but I like it more than the SSPL/BSL/other neo-licenses.

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