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by api 1037 days ago
Liberal licenses are alive and well for libraries but for finished and polished products expect more of this. People are tired of being free labor for hustlers and billion dollar companies.

“Thanks for all the work, we’ll take that and put it behind a paywall and monetize it for you and not give you anything.”

People other than the author have a huge advantage when it comes to monetizing: they can focus only on that. The authors have to focus on creating while others can focus only on marketing.
2 comments
fmajid 1037 days ago
I don't have much sympathy for that argument. AGPL (or dual-licensed AGPL + commercial) is the simple countermeasure for freeloaders. Most tech companies won't touch it with a 20-foot pole.
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j1elo 1037 days ago
Didn't seem to be such of a silver bullet for MongoDB, which used AGPL and still were forced to abandon it in favor of an even stronger version made by themselves (the SSPL, which is an AGPL on steroids).

I'm not sure if there are more such cases, but clearly with this one, AGPL was not enough.

I guess the issue is: if you have freeloaders, who are making all the money you would need to keep the OSS project alive, AGPL doesn't help you in any way. They are free to get the code as-is, run it, and serve their customers. Not sure why everybody suggests AGPL+Commercial as the perfect solution, it doesn't seem to solve anything for that case.

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freyes 1037 days ago
> Most tech companies won't touch it with a 20-foot pole.

This!, in my experience lawyers will deny the use of AGPL software, even when there is no risk (from my point of view). Many companies have already a list of blessed licenses, and AGPL is not part of the ones I'm aware of.

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api 1037 days ago
This phenomenon is mostly just GPL-phobia. Microsoft spent billions in the 90s to convince corporate legal that the GPL is "viral" in ways it is not. You could simply rename the license to something other than the letters G-P-L and this would go away.
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progbits 1037 days ago
NetMaker homepage says "backed by Ycombinator" so I doubt they are free labor.

I sympathize to some degree, but true OSS is an important distinction for many and should be highlighted.

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