Comment by tyre
9 hours ago
The copyleft licenses are toxic for adoption. Companies default away from them because there are a lot of murky unknowns (e.g. if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is that extending it? Does that service’s source have to be shared?) that simply aren’t worth the hassle.
If you want your library to get traction with many real world use cases, you need to have a permissive license. If you want to stick to the principles, you’re going to sacrifice adoption.
Not saying one is better than the other, but there’s a tradeoff.
> if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is that extending it
No, it isn't; a client talking to an AGPLv3 service over a network API stays a separate program and is not touched by the license at all. Section 13 places obligations solely on whoever runs a modified version of the service, while remote users, API clients included, only gain the right to receive that service's source. So nothing on the client side must suddenly become AGPLv3, and the only thing that ever has to be shared is the AGPL'd program itself, not anything across the API boundary. The first half of your post is basically unfounded FUD; the second half tracks.
You may think this. I may think this. But what really matters is if the lawyers for your customers think this. It may be pure FUD, but AGPL projects have a tough time getting adoption in companies because they would rather avoid the problem than be wrong.
This is true, unfortunately. I've have had to walk away from a client because their software-illiterate lawyer didn't want me to build with copyleft dependencies.
It wasn't the only red flag in this case, but frustrating nonetheless.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using software that has requires people to contribute back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most important metric for herdr right now.
They're right, but they're presenting it in a way as if the toxicity of AGPL is the actual truth, and not just the opinion of greedy corporations.
Being toxic to greedy corporations but beneficial to everyone else is the point of the GPL licenses.
But it’s not only toxic to the greedy corporations but all the others as well, hence
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Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the rug pull before taking action (Terraform and Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so far.
You can just take someone else's permissively licensed code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same trick works for copyleft.
For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.
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