[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!)

[joshuamorton]

> 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!

I mean, this isn't a lie though. Statically linking AGPL software, even by accident, does put all of Google's services at risk. It's not a certainty that they'd need lose, but you're denying that it's a risk. That's false.

Consider the values: We link AGPL software and there's an x% chance we have to spend 10 billion dollars in litigation, engineering effort, and fines to keep our stuff closed source. At what value of X do you make this rule?

> Damages aren't a trillion dollar punitive thing -- they're designed to set things right. You pay either

Punitive damages exist. They're a thing. Why are you pretending that they aren't?

> 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.

I don't follow this argument at all. What ecosystem is Google trying to kill? The AGPL "ecosystem", which is what exactly? You yourself keep insisting that AGPL only really makes sense for products, not libraries, so in what sense is there an ecosystem to kill? A random collection of products isn't an ecosystem.

[woofie11]

> Consider the values: We link AGPL software and there's an x% chance we have to spend 10 billion dollars in litigation, engineering effort, and fines to keep our stuff closed source. At what value of X do you make this rule?

That X% is at most the same for using proprietary software. AGPL does NOTHING beyond an ADDITIONAL license grant beyond that. You can pretend AGPL code was Copyright (c) All Rights Reserved. Google ought to ban all software not written in-house under that argument.

In practice, since you've set the bar at $10 billion, that X% is 0%. There is no AGPL software in existence where damages would go over a few million dollars. If you're gonna swing around paranoid conspiracy theories with 10 billion dollar numbers, as you seem prone to, you should build all your data centers underground in case aliens form Mars attack. At what X% does that stop making sense? You're risking a TRILLION dollar business.

> Punitive damages exist. They're a thing. Why are you pretending that they aren't?

You're clearly not a lawyer here. You're confusing copyright law, normal business law, and tort law. Can you please name a realistic scenario where Google might be at risk for punitive damages under the AGPL?

https://www.leagle.com/decision/1983925714f2d2111873

In a worst-case, if the copyright violation is intentional, which is astronomically unlikely, you'd be looking at treble damages. Which goes from peanuts to 3x peanuts.

re: last comment. I apologize I accused Google about lying. Never confuse malice for stupidity. It's very possible Google is just being grossly idiotic. I still have vague memories of the old Google which used to hire smart people, so perhaps I just overestimated the company.....