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by xxpor 3457 days ago
>That's company policy

Yes.

I was just pointing out that regardless of modification/distribution/whatever, bigco policy is to not allow ANY AGPL code within a 10 mile radius of any computer owned by said company.

The author(s) are free to use AGPL, but there are significant downsides if they care about adoption.
2 comments
yarrel 3457 days ago
They care about the freedom of software users, not weird corporate policies.

Non-adoption by non-respecters of freedom isn't a downside.

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Manishearth 3456 days ago
These aren't "weird corporate policies", they're very sensible. If they wish to use such software they need to be very careful in how, and track its use, and they just don't think having such a framework is worth it.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13342657 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13342804

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wpietri 3457 days ago
It's a downside if it leads to general non-adoption, either directly or because a competitor with a different license gets the market share.

I'm all for the moral stance, but moral purity in a vacuum is essentially irrelevant. Effective morality is about impact on the world. A morality that's only about the good feelings of the purist is sterile self-indulgence.

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sjwright 3455 days ago
Precisely. And even RMS has been known to agree with that principle.

http://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3

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webmaven 3452 days ago
> bigco policy is to not allow ANY AGPL code within a 10 mile radius of any computer owned by said company."

Wait, that seems extremely paranoid, even if only meant figuratively... Can you explain the thinking on restricting the use of AGPL'd licensed applications?

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