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by teddyh 2146 days ago
A company which sells that much software can certainly afford to re-implement an AGPL component; or at least implement a good enough stub implementation to make the software run acceptably. Especially if, as Chris DiBona of Google claims, all AGPL software is useless and unneeded.

However, the point was that releasing the proprietary (oh so secret) source code is never the only option, and it is indeed false scaremongering to claim that it is.
2 comments
nomel 2146 days ago
> afford to re-implement an AGPL component

> good enough stub implementation to make the software run acceptably

This is what the company I work for does, and most that I've heard about do, but preemptively.

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teddyh 2146 days ago
Great! You, and all who do so, are then protected from ever having to face any problems from AGPL.
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euroq 2146 days ago
> A company which sells that much software can certainly afford to re-implement an AGPL component; or at least implement a good enough stub implementation to make the software run acceptably.

If you ever work at a software company, you'll understand that you never have enough time to do what you want, and you have to pick and choose the most valuable tasks and go with those. Rewriting perfectly working code is never valuable.

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teddyh 2146 days ago
> If you ever work at a software company

No personal attacks, please.

I do, in fact, work at a tech company, and do, in fact, write a lot of code to do my job. However, it is not a software company, as it does not sell proprietary software directly.

> Rewriting perfectly working code is never valuable.

It might be far more valuable than the other option, i.e. releasing the proprietary software under a free software license. An AGPL licensing issue will only ever, in a worst case scenario, force you to choose one of those two options, no more.

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michaelmrose 2146 days ago
Every GPL violation that I've ever heard about remedied was remedied over time often months to years. If you never create derivative works you don't intend to share you will never have an issue. If you do clearly and obviously conspire to break the law you can probably still negotiate yourself enough time to comply with the law and retain the rights to your own software after having tried to get away with breaking the law.
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