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by eitland 1884 days ago
It seems you can always just run the AGPL licensed software and as long as you interact with it through the network or the database you won't have to relicense anything.

What you cannot do is:

1. change the AGPL software itself and provide it to end users in any form without providing updated sources

2. make a combined product and not provide sources for all of it under AGPL.

3. Also there is nothing to prevent you from releasing sources of your software dual licensed under both MIT and AGPL.
1 comments
angry_octet 1884 days ago
No, it is the network interaction that is specifically a software release trigger. "Interact" is a term encompassing a broad scope of behaviour -- any network message that causes an API to be called.

1+2 are plain old GPL. 3 is just a basic consequence of owning all the IP, but it isn't possible to release a patch to an AGPL under MIT.

AGPL has massively enhanced virality, which is the entire point.

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eitland 1884 days ago
> AGPL has massively enhanced virality, which is the entire point.

Yep, but AFAIK (not a lawyer I have just spent some time trying to figure this out) it doesn't affect other software over the Internet:

Some examples based on Friendica:

- Chrome won't become AGPL licensed by being used to access Friendica

- MariaDB won't become AGPL licensed by being accessed by Friendica

- any changes you make to Friendica must obviously be AGPL (if you let anybody use it)

- if you want to write an extension for Friendica it needs to be AGPL (but if you want you can also release it under another license)

- if you want to put your or someone elses open source or proprietary code into Friendica you must plan to release that code too under the AGPL (of course you can still release it under another license simultaneously but it must be available as AGPL in addition.)

The difference is that not in what it infects but how it spreads - kind of.

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angry_octet 1883 days ago
The practical effect is that all modifications to an AGPL code are likely to be encompassed as soon as you use it on the internet.

Obviously it can't change the license of other products, but other products trigger the virality. For example, Apache calls a module which triggers generating a graph from your custom grafana instance. Your custom code is now AGPL.

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