[kelnage]

In one of the of the organisations I mentioned, they had a strict policy against using any GPL dependencies, let alone the AGPL. I tried discussing this with the legal policy person but they were quite resolute - they feared it’s use could “infect” our code and therefore must be avoided.

I frankly doubt there’s any sort of cost-benefit analysis being done here. Certainly in my experience it was much more driven by legal uncertainty and risk-aversion.

[jka]

Thanks - yep, that matches my rough understanding of the view from the ground too.

Statisticians and scientists sometimes talk about 'type 1' errors and 'type 2' errors - false positives and false negatives. I can rarely remember which is which, but I think that generally, software license/contract legal professionals never want to advise a client about something that later turns out to be a liability.

That's fine, because it protects their firm's reputation, and it maintains the client's trust (which needs to be strong). But I think that in the context of software licenses, this has led to an overly strong aversion (and indeed self-replicating idea) about the AGPL and other copyleft licenses.

(in the context of cost-benefit, it's hard to justify the upside from using and helping contribute towards a software commons, but I think it can be significant, perhaps depending on project context and popularity)