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by brimpa
5533 days ago
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I always think it's unfortunate that posts like this leave out the horror that is Affero GPL[1]. The gist: web apps that use anything licensed under Affero GPL to serve pages would be subject to the copyleft provisions of the license. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License |
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The whole point of the GPL is that if you use software, you deserve to have access to its source code. It originated in an era where there was little software in use that lived on someone else's servers which you never touched. And so ignoring that didn't affect the GPL's intended purpose.
With the rise of the web, it is now very common to be dependent on software that you only interact with remotely, through a website. The Affero GPL returns the original intent of the GPL. It puts websites on the same grounds with respect to the GPL that native applications have always been. Every argument you can come up with against the Affero GPL was already made about the original GPL.
If you don't like the intent of the GPL, don't apply it to things that you create. If you don't like the effect of the GPL, don't use GPLed code in your software. In the meantime don't bother complaining that it does exactly what it was intended to do.