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by _cenw 655 days ago
There's enough legal uncertainty about API calls being considered linking that it keeps coming up. Minio are probably at the forefront of claiming this somewhat implicitly while referring you to your lawyer (or their pricing page, preferably) when asked about how they understand the AGPL.

FSF/GNU have an example of an AGPL proxy becoming compliant by serving it a page with the offer to download source code on the first request, pretty far off from reality if you ask me. That's also the big other issue, AGPL is unclear about conveyance over a network. Does a header work? Does a link to the source repo work or do you need to offer hard copies? What do you do if the "networking" is a highly specific protocol that simply can't make that offer over the wire?

I much prefer the clarity of intent of the EUPL.
1 comments
kikoreis 654 days ago
Nah, the AGPL is pretty clear (and way clearer than the GPL and LGPL due to combined/derived work fuzziness). The issue with it isn't anything to do with the mechanism of the license itself, because it is pretty clear what the criteria are (and offering an API over the network definitively constitutes Remote Network Interaction) and how you can fulfill the source distribution. The real issue is that the AGPLv3 doesn't preclude a third party from commercializing the software (whether modified or not).
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_cenw 654 days ago
The problem with Minio is how many layers of indirection "interacting with an API" consitutes. If I write a webapp that uses Minio in the background, Minio has stated that their belief is that your webapp is subject to the viral part of the AGPL.
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kikoreis 645 days ago
That's interesting. I was reading their licensing compliance FAQ at https://min.io/compliance and it doesn't allude to that; in fact it suggests that for instance calling a REST API doesn't imply derived work (modulo the specificity piece), referencing the GPL. The omission of the over-the-network AGPL provision is notable. I wonder if it's obscure on purpose?
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kikoreis 645 days ago
Perhaps even stranger, MinIO have publicly stated they have revoked an Apache 2 license grant to a third party, Weka: https://blog.min.io/weka-violates-minios-open-source-license...

Not sure what their counsel is thinking there..

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_cenw 642 days ago
MinIO has taken (and still is taking) contributions without CLA, so they likely don't even have the ability to sell license exceptions.

They seem to have at least fixed their compliance page. It used to read:

"If you are an Original Equipment Manufacturers, a Reseller, or an Independent Software Vendor that combines and distributes commercially licensed software with MinIO software and do not wish to distribute the source code for the commercially licensed software under GNU Affero General Public License, Version 3.0 (AGPLv3), you must enter into a commercial license agreement with MinIO, available at https://min.io/pricing."

And that's opposed to "FOSS".

https://web.archive.org/web/20210415185046/https://min.io/co...

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