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by thesuperbigfrog 1217 days ago
>> This would not risk your company's IP.

"The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there."

So your company is okay providing all their source code to users?

I know that some companies do this, but most do not.
1 comments
charcircuit 1217 days ago
>So your company is okay providing all their source code to users?

Nothing is forcing them to do that. If they are infringing they simply need to delete the infringing code and rewrite it by hand.

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JoshTriplett 1216 days ago
That's not how copyright infringement works. Great, you've stopped committing new infringements, but there's still a legal case over the previous infringements, for which you still need to provide appropriate remedy.

If the remedy for copyright infringement were just "oh, we got caught, guess we'll stop now", that would provide substantial incentive for people to violate licenses as long as they hoped they wouldn't get caught. The remedy for such violations needs to be substantial enough that it's not profitable to temporarily get away with.

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number6 1216 days ago
The company would have to pay a fee to the copyright owner plus some extra.

I am jaded from practice around GDPR where the thinking of companies goes along the line: if we are caught, we will pay extra, but now we make big cash. And who knows, maybe we won't get caught.

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thesuperbigfrog 1217 days ago
>> Nothing is forcing them to do that.

If you use AGPLv3-licensed code in your codebase, you are agreeing to the terms of the license.

Practically all corporate legal teams for companies that creates software will strictly prohibit the use of AGPLv3-licensed software, if not all GPL-based licenses.

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ndriscoll 1216 days ago
Using AGPL code doesn't mean you agree to the terms. It means if you don't agree to and obey the terms, you don't have a license, which is copyright infringement.
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thesuperbigfrog 1216 days ago
>> if you don't agree to and obey the terms, you don't have a license, which is copyright infringement

So you either agree to the license terms or you are breaking the law.

If your company violates copyright law, it can be taken to court and sued for damages or forced compliance to the license terms:

https://www.mend.io/resources/blog/the-100-million-case-for-...

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/gpl-open-source-litigat...

https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases

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charcircuit 1216 days ago
Being taken to court for infringement of free software's copyright is rare. On top of that the copied code only being a snippet from copilot makes it even less likely to happen. The snippet alone may not be considered copyrightable.
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