AGPL no more

http://blog.opalang.org/2012/05/opa-license-change-not-just-agpl.html

by hbbio • 14 years ago

38 39 14 years ago

blog.opalang.org

rmc4• 14 years ago

most developers won’t release the source anyway while they develop for many possible reasons: It’s not working yet, they are not proud of their code yet, they don’t know what to do with it yet, etc.

Well under the AGPL they are required to release the code… Sorry, but that's copyright law and that's the copyleft licence.

hbbio2• 14 years ago

What I meant is: while they develop. The AGPL does not require you to publish your code before you either distribute it or run it online.

mikeash2• 14 years ago

No, they are only required to release the code when the distribute the result. The license does not compel a developer to release the code before they've started distributing it.

emillon• 14 years ago

In the context of the AGPL, serving an application is like distributing a binary, so they should distribute its sources too.

rmc4• 14 years ago

The license does not compel a developer to release the code before they've started distributing it.

No that's the GPL you're thinking of. AGPL requires the source code be shared out to everyone once (roughly) people access it.

ivix• 14 years ago

Developers take note: License with AGPL at your peril, or rather at the peril of your product, which most people will not touch if it is AGPL licensed.

naner2• 14 years ago

On the HN frontpage not far from this thread, there is a story about 10gen raising $42M with their AGPL licensed MongoDB.

protomyth3• 14 years ago

from the MongoDB licensing page: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Licensing

"The goal of the server license is to require that enhancements to MongoDB be released to the community. Traditional GPL often does not achieve this anymore as a huge amount of software runs in the cloud. For example, Google has no obligation to release their improvements to the MySQL kernel – if they do they are being nice.

To make the above practical, we promise that your client application which uses the database is a separate work. To facilitate this, the mongodb.org supported drivers (the part you link with your application) are released under Apache license, which is copyleft free. Note: if you would like a signed letter asserting the above promise please request via email."

On the the other hand Opa's statement was "And because of the latter, every program written in Opa, that links to the runtime, must itself be released under the AGPL or the GPL."

Very different scenarios for developers.

js4all• 14 years ago

Careful, there is often this misunderstanding with Mongo. Using MongoDB from your program does not require you to open source it. The Drivers which you link against are Apache or MIT licensed and Mongo's AGPL license has a "different work" exception for exactly that use.

sparkie4• 14 years ago

Correction: most developers (won't/might not) touch it. End users don't care - they don't even need to know what the AGPL is.

On the other hand - many developers won't touch non-free software or cloud services due to security and privacy concerns. The AGPL is the ideal license for this crowd - which probably includes the original authors anyway.

There's a fair few successful AGPL projects, but I'm not sure there's any real evidence that the AGPL actually harms a project. It's mostly just people complaining that they aren't getting a free lunch.

chimeracoder4• 14 years ago

> It's mostly just people complaining that they aren't getting a free lunch.

This sentiment both frustrates and amuses me.

On the one hand, complaining that a GPL-licensed project isn't BSD/MIT-licensed smacks of entitlement - nobody forced the original developer to use a free license, after all, so don't complain.

On the other hand, this sense of entitlement is exactly what the free software movement is all about - according to the FSF, users deserve freedom and nothing less[1].

(The important difference is that users should be entitled to free software as opposed to proprietary software, not one free license over another free license).

Still, anytime I hear people complaining that a project uses one of the GPL licenses instead of a BSD/MIT license, I'm always tempted to remind them that the real alternative was for the original developer to keep the code proprietary... and everyone loses in that situation.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

guelo• 14 years ago

Another correction: most corporate developers, startup or big corp, won't touch it (because of fearmongering by lawyers and Microsoft and the like). Hobby developers have no incentive to develop for free for your corporate ecosystem.

dlitz• 14 years ago

A less fear-mongering note: If you're designing a language or a compiler, there's a good chance that you'll have adoption problems if your standard runtime environment constrains people's license choices.

That isn't exactly news, either. There's a reason why glibc isn't released under the AGPL.

protomyth3• 14 years ago

from the post: "The Opa compiler will remain an AGPL project."

The title on the blog post is "Opa License Change: Not just AGPL anymore"

kstenerud• 14 years ago

From the post: "The standard library and the native backend will be licensed under the GPL license with the so-called ClassPath exception, like Java. The exception means you can link the GPL code with any code, opening the door to license your application under any license."

protomyth3• 14 years ago

Yep, multiple parts having multiple licenses. My point was the AGPL is still in the mix.

for completeness here is the list from the post:

1. The Opa compiler will remain an AGPL project.

2. The standard library and the native backend will be licensed under the GPL license with the so-called ClassPath exception, like Java. The exception means you can link the GPL code with any code, opening the door to license your application under any license.

3. The forthcoming Node.js backend will be licensed under the MIT license.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

Why not LGPL?

dalke2• 14 years ago

Most likely for reasons described in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html .

asparagui• 14 years ago

The future is BSD style licenses, not the GPL3 variants. RMS got a little too clever for his own good.

Why on earth would you agree to give up your source code/competitive advantage to save writing a few hundred lines of javascript? It's one thing to try and write a kernel from scratch, but to sell your soul for a Javascript library (looking @ you, Sencha Touch, which is mostly re-themed jQuery mobile) is silly.

At least these licenses have a good purpose: they provide a shibboleth for identifying the ideologically pure.

streptomycin2• 14 years ago

You seem to be implicitly assuming that "the future" is "a few hundred lines of javascript".

sparkie4• 14 years ago

Also implicitly assuming that all code is written for competitive advantage, and that licenses are aimed at developers.

kylemaxwell• 14 years ago

I found the headline a bit misleading. Maybe it's just me, but when I see "AGPL no more", it sounds like the FSF is deprecating the Affero GPL. And the article isn't even about a project dumping the AGPL, but licensing different components in different ways while retaining the AGPL for a major part of the core.

I'd hope for better headline writing in the future.

hbbio2• 14 years ago

I thought the domain name next to it was giving a hint. Better headline might have been: "Dual licensing business model does not work anymore" but that's long.

chimeracoder4• 14 years ago

Will the formerly AGPL components continue to be dual-licensed under the AGPL as well?

If not, that's a problem, because the AGPL and GPL are incompatible, so that means that nobody can use the AGPL for new forks/patches on the product anymore.

(That's not quite true in that they can receive a copy of the product from someone who received it under the original AGPL license and therefore can and must redistribute it under the AGPL, but the point is that, when making licensing changes, you should always add a licensing option instead of changing it, because the latter isn't really possible, and the former is more explicit as to the outcome).

dalke2• 14 years ago

AGPLv1 and GPLv2 are not compatible. GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are compatible because of clause 13 in both licenses. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License#C... for more details.

chimeracoder4• 14 years ago

Ah, I didn't realize that the project was released under the GPLv3 instead of GPLv2.

xi• 14 years ago

GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are mutually compatible, that is, you could link GPL code to AGPL code and vice versa.

sparkie4• 14 years ago

It's not so much that they're compatible - but rather the GPL explicitly allows relicensing of GPL code under the AGPL. The combined work must be AGPL licensed.

ArtB• 14 years ago

What is the difference between LGPL and GPL with the classpath exception?

AGPL no more

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