[woofie11]

I don't think Daniel contradicts Eben, at least in the link here...

There are good rationales and bad rationales for a decision. Google made a good decision with a bad rationale. Daniel made a good decision with a good rationale. Why does this matter? If I'm running my own business, my business context won't be the same as Google's. There are times to pick AGPL, and times to not pick it, and that requires accurately understanding the law.

[joshuamorton]

You realize that Daniel works for Google, and is one of the people who makes such decisions about OSS for Google, so if you think he made the decision with a good rationale, then so did Google, since his decision was Google's.

[woofie11]

I did not realize that. I read the one link. That's all I know about Daniel. He sounded reasonable there and what he wrote made sense.

There are quite a few logical leaps between:

1) Daniel writing a reasonable post on HN 2) Daniel being correct in everything he does 3) Daniel making all decisions for Google 4) Daniel being the one who handles all communications about those decisions

All I know is #1.

The logic chain can break at any of those points. Perhaps Google made the decision with good rationale which was simplified or changed for communications. Perhaps someone else at Google decided. Etc. I don't know.

Some of Google's policies, viewed from the outside, look crazy ("Do not install AGPL-licensed programs on your workstation, Google-issued laptop, or Google-issued phone without explicit authorization from the Open Source Programs Office."), but may have valid justifications too. For example, Google could have automated systems which do audits which would choke on this sort of thing.

What I do know is that many companies have an irrational, unjustified fear of the AGPL, and that it often makes good business sense.

I also trust Eben for his legal judgement. He's brilliant, and usually right.

[joshuamorton]

None of those follow. The implication is Daniel wrote a post about why Google made a decision.

That's the entire chain of reasoning. Nothing about him always being right, only him being right in a context where your already admitted he was right. Nothing about him anyways being a decision maker, just the belief that he isn't lying about Google's reasoning.

[woofie11]

In that case, your post was a complete non sequitur. Drew is responding to this aggressive and misleading Google page:

https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

He is not responding to a random post from a Googler on HN, or to Google's internal policies or decision-making processes. Google has a bunch of scary-sounding public-facing FUD about the AGPL, containing a bunch of legal nonsense, which is scaring a lot of people. That's out-of-line with Google's former policy of not being evil. This whole discussion has that as the overarching context.

That a reasonable Googler posted a reasonable argument somewhere about why Google made the internal decision has no connection to this discussion. If Daniel's rationale is why Google made the decision, Google should by all means post it on the page above.

As a footnote, most companies I know which use AGPL code keep a clean bright line between AGPL and non-AGPL. That's a pretty sensible policy. AGPL is mostly used for things like stand-alone apps, which don't link to anything, rather than for things like libraries which link to internal systems. People contribute code to AGPL projects without hesitation if there's a bug.

[joshuamorton]

Can you explain what about Daniel's explanation is incompatible with what's at your link? I don't see how they disagree.

> AGPL is mostly used for things like stand-alone apps, which don't link to anything, rather than for things like libraries which link to internal systems.

Right, except for when they don't, which is just as (if not more) important from a legal perspective.

[woofie11]

Google's page has toxic and false anti-AGPL FUD like this:

"This viral effect requires that the complete corresponding source code of the product or service be released to the world under the AGPL license. This is triggered if the product or service can be accessed over a remote network interface, so it does not even require that the product or service is actually distributed. Because Google’s core products are services that users interact with over a remote network interface (Search, Gmail, Maps, YouTube), the consequences of an engineer accidentally depending on AGPL for one of these services are so great that we maintain an aggressively-broad ban on all AGPL software to doubly-ensure that AGPL could never be incorporated in these services in any manner."

Daniel's explanation doesn't have false FUD like this. It has reasonable legal analysis of the effect of AGPL when you have a large labor pool, which is in-line with everything else Eben, I (not-a-lawyer), or any sane lawyer would say. It's a simple distinction.

Google lies that if you so much as touch the AGPL, you risk your business imploding and the end of Google products like Maps, GMail, etc. which suddenly become open source! That's really scary! That's a lie that scares a lot of people.

There is no "viral effect" -- that's smear language designed to scare people about having a commons -- there's a share-alike. And that implosion cannot happen -- it's simply not the result of a copyright violation. It doesn't take Eben or Daniel to tell you that. If you make an accident, the worst-case outcome is you pay damages. Damages aren't a trillion dollar punitive thing -- they're designed to set things right. You pay either:

* Statutory damages (peanuts for Google)

* Profits (how much you would have made if you hadn't used the AGPL code but e.g. licensed the code otherwise)

* Damages (how much the other party lost due to your use; typically zero)

And a little bit of engineering work to remove the AGPL stuff so the violation does not continue. Then you move on.

AGPL provides no dangers beyond those of normal, licensed commercial code. If I pay for five licenses and accidentally install ten, or similar, the exact same thing happens. The AGPL is careful NOT to explode as Google describes, exactly for this reason. It's a simple rights grant. If you do X you can do Y. If you don't, that doesn't mean I can suddenly force you to do X; it reverts to traditional copyright.

There are decades of GPL enforcement actions out there, so the no precedent stuff is nonsense too; you don't need to go to a Supreme Court to understand how these things behave in the real world. It hasn't gone to a court of appeals precisely because it doesn't need to. There is little unsettled law here.

There is a little bit of ambiguity about where the line for 'derivative work' sits, but it's also not the sort of scary thing Google makes it out to be. There is some case law around this as well, just not around the AGPL. It's not rocket science to translate.

Google is trying to kill an open ecosystem, adopting exact tactics from Microsoft's nineties-era anti-Linux playbook, right down to adopting the exact same mean, dirty language to scare people. That's a nasty, dirty thing to do.

(and in the meantime, Microsoft became, by some metrics, the world's largest open source contributor; how times change!)