[awesomeMilou]

That's the GNU project's interpretation of the license. I don't see how a court couldn't reach a different agreement on what the often discussed "derivative works" section means.

The FAQ also has interesting takes, where depending on the jurisdiction you're in, I'm sure such views would differ:

    Q: In an object-oriented language such as Java, if I use a class that is GPLed without modifying, and subclass it, in what way does the GPL affect the larger program? (#OOPLang)

    A: Subclassing is creating a derivative work. Therefore, the terms of the GPL affect the whole program where you create a subclass of a GPLed class. 

Thats... a really weird and technically inept take on an issue that is not broadly applicable to all object oriented languges, but going with this argument, I'd argue that "subclassing" essentially constitutes just using an interface (in the general sense, not in the Java sense) to some existing software, so in Minio's case, using their API would constitute a similar usage pattern -> my "derivative" work must now be GPL licensed.

[camgunz]

I know a lot of this stuff is legally pretty new (though AGPLv3 is almost 17 years old now) and there's not a huge body of case law around it. But--and I'm earnestly asking here--is there case law where courts reach in and modify licenses separate from the authors' explicit intent? It's hard for me to imagine a court doing that, especially with all the reliance interests involved (I use AGPLv3 with the understanding that subclassing requires release, court says no, now my business model is toast).

> I'd argue that "subclassing" essentially constitutes just using an interface (in the general sense, not in the Java sense) to some existing software, so in Minio's case, using their API would constitute a similar usage pattern -> my "derivative" work must now be GPL licensed.

No, again the difference is incorporation. In order to subclass something you have to incorporate it into your code.

[awesomeMilou]

> is there case law where courts reach in and modify licenses separate from the authors' explicit intent

What are you on about? The explicit purpose of a license is that it's users do not have to worry about anyone else's "explicit intent". A license needs to be unambigious about it's terms, else it's just not a good license, hence see the discussion in this thread about the meaning of derivative works.

It may very well be that the FSF/RMS/GNU Project had some intent on it's use when creating the GPL/AGPL v3, but a court in another jurisdiction will not care. I have no idea how to get a hold of the FSF when I'm being sued for license violations in europe and even if so, I doubt a court would care about the FSF's interpretation, given that they're likely not a party to the proceedings.

I'm surprised that people on an US centric site believe that intent in US jurisprudence matters, because in a legal system largely based on precedence, it really does not.

> No, again the difference is incorporation. In order to subclass something you have to incorporate it into your code.

You have to do the same thing in order to use API's. I'm sorry, unless I don't understand something here, this doesn't make sense.

[camgunz]

> What are you on about? The explicit purpose of a license is that it's users do not have to worry about anyone else's "explicit intent". A license needs to be unambigious about it's terms, else it's just not a good license, hence see the discussion in this thread about the meaning of derivative works.

Even the most carefully written license has ambiguity, and that's for two reasons. First, we want to cover situations without exhaustively enumerating and describing them in great detail. Statutes and the Constitution run into this all the time, but no one's like "don't start a business in the US, their Constitution is ambiguous and courts have to clarify and interpret it all the time" because courts (except for this one, I'll admit) do things like take reliance interests into account when adjudicating cases. It works well enough in contract law that we've built the most advanced economy in history, so I wouldn't poo-poo it.

Second, and I'll echo Dijkstra here [0] our languages aren't precise. They're bad at the thing you want them to do. Your argument argues against all contracts and licenses everywhere, even laws themselves.

Finally, (A)GPLv3 don't refer to derivative works. That's a GPLv2 thing.

> I'm surprised that people on an US centric site believe that intent in US jurisprudence matters, because in a legal system largely based on precedence, it really does not.

Again, happy to read any case law you can find on this.

> You have to do the same thing in order to use API's. I'm sorry, unless I don't understand something here, this doesn't make sense.

I'm starting to believe people here don't know what linking and incorporate mean. Linking is using a linker--like ld--to build an executable or library. It's not some abstract idea of linkage. Incorporate means pulling the source code into your own. It's not some abstract idea of building a larger system. You don't pull the source code to Minio into your code to use its API.

0: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667...