[marvin-hansen]

VC backed companies love AGPL because it’s basically a poison pill that still makes them look OSS good. The entire blog post can be summarized as “we ticked all the boxes on paper, now pay us for looking good”. People, however, usually pay for good software instead of good virtue signaling.

[ezekg]

I actually agree with this in practice. OSS purists might argue that AGPL and non-compete source-available licenses are fundamentally different, with the former being OSI-approved, but in reality -- at least in business -- they're used to serve the same purpose: to give the author an unfair advantage. And that's totally fine -- I'm all for unfair advantages in business. But the distinction between these licenses is blurrier than the OSI would like to admit, yet they insist it's a crystal clear line. /rant

[rectang]

As an open source advocate, I'm fine with source-available licenses. They've been around forever!

What ticks me off is freeloading on the goodwill generated by open source, for instance, by calling your license "Apache License Version 2 with the Commons Clause" or by insisting that "source available" is actually "open source". In other words, what you're trying to do here. That goodwill doesn't belong to you. Don't try to steal it, and don't be surprised when those who are invested in open source push back hard when you do.

[ezekg]

> ... by insisting that "source available" is actually "open source". In other words, what you're trying to do here.

I never said that. I said the lines are blurry when it comes to how the AGPL is used in business

The AGPL isn't used to uphold OSS values, it's used as a defense against competition.

[gwd]

> The AGPL isn't used to uphold OSS values, it's used as a defense against competition.

It's only a defense against competitors who want to use it and not give back -- just like the original GPL. If you prefer the BSD ethos, that's fine, but just say "I disagree with the copyleft philosophy", not "AGPL doesn't uphold OSS values".

[ezekg]

I think my point was more that the author is the only one who can legally make closed-source modifications, i.e. their open core business model, giving them an unfair advantage. Also, the FUD surrounding AGPL. I guess I'm trying to point out that there's an obvious reason every open source business uses AGPL... and it's not that they want competitors to contribute back.

[gwd]

If they accepted contributions without a CLA, then no they can't make closed-source modifications (without some major surgery to get rid of the code not owned by them). If they wrote all the code in the first place, then that's hardly an "unfair advantage".

The only way to accept contributions and then make closed-source modifications is with a CLA; in which case it's the CLA, not the AGPL that you're really complaining about.

ETA: OK, so what if a company start out being AGPL, never accepts any contributions, and then when they become established, stop publishing new code as AGPL and takes everything proprietary? Isn't that just "open-washing", taking advantage of all the community good-will and hype around open source?

I don't think so; consider four possible scenarios:

1. They keep everything proprietary from the beginning.

1a. They become established, making decent money, serving some customer needs. Everything is still proprietary

1b. They fail. Good luck talking their VCs at that point into open-sourcing their code (or even getting it into any kind of shape that anyone could use). All their customers are stuck without any options but to stop using the software.

2. They start by making things AGPL.

2a. They become established, making decent money; eventually they take the product closed-source, doing one final release. Their customers continue to be served, but everything is now proprietary.

2b. They fail. The code is already AGPL, so nothing any of their owners or creditors can do to claw it back. Large companies that have come to depend on their software can take their code and continue to use it and develop it on their own if they want. If there's enough of the right kind of people, a community can form around the releases and the project can live on in a pure open-source form.

2a is better than 1a, because at least there was a time when things were AGPL; the AGPL code can still be forked off and maintained if there's a big enough community.

2b is way better than 1b. In fact, 2b can hopefully make 2a more likely, since it's lower risk for people to build their infrastructure on a start-up.

[fweimer]

Competitors likely have the resources to figure out how to be compliant (with or without giving back), so that's not really it. And as far as I understand the startup situation, most struggle to attract paying customers at all. If you are in a situation that someone is competing against you using your own codebase, you have already gotten very, very far.

I believe the usual AGPL idea is that it generates sufficient FUD for regular customers so that they don't want to run the free (AGPL) version in production. Instead, they feel compelled to cut a separate, commercial licensing deal. A project/product is likely to follow thus model if the nominally AGPLed project has a contributor licensing agreement that involves an asymmetric copyright grant (i.e., contributions are under a very permissive license, but you only get the aggregate of all contributions under the AGPL).

[kkielhofner]

Additionally, they've been on both sides.

If they are looking to invest in a company when they do technical due diligence and bring in a source code auditing company like Synopsis Black Duck any AGPL you're using is so problematic for them it can be a deal breaker. At a minimum it's such a major sticking point it can be one of the most significant things to hold up a transaction as you try to explain why it isn't as problematic as they think.

Having been through that process a couple of times I won't touch AGPL because it's such a PIA - your poison pill.

On the flip side, if they have or are investing in you and and you've made some aspect of your solution open source under AGPL they know any competitor using it is going to have challenges getting VC investment (see point above).

[wmf]

It's the free users who want open source virtue signaling. Then hopefully you convert some of them to paying customers because the software is so good.

[tonygiorgio]

> we have already made a compromise in not open-sourcing the whole codebase, so I thought it would be fair to pick the "freest" license of them all.

I died laughing at his comment later in the article. I still don’t know what his product is but to have such a broken misconception of free and open source, I really don’t want to know what he’s trying to sell.

[goodpoint]

AGPL is perfectly valid FOSS. There is no poison pill whatsoever.

[the_mitsuhiko]

In practice there is because the copyright holder will retain the exclusive rights (via CLA or else) to distribute the product under preferable and AGPL incompatible terms. This is not an “everybody is equal” situation.

[goodpoint]

No, anybody is free to fork any codebase under AGPL and also free to contribute to the original projects under a CLA if that's what they want.

Users are free to use the version under AGPL, there is no poison pill.

[ezekg]

It's also surrounded by FUD which is why a lot of enterprises, i.e. Google, won't touch AGPL with a ten-foot pole.

OSS startups use this to their advantage to push enterprises to purchase commercial licenses.

[gwd]

> ...AGPL [is] basically a poison pill...

Bill Gates from the 1990's called, he wants his FUD back.

To be more specific: What arguments can be used to show that the AGPL is a "poison pill" in the SaaS space, which couldn't have been used by Microsoft back in the 90's and early 2000's to show that GPL was a "poison pill" in the distributed software space?

[wmf]

There's pretty widespread agreement that the GPL doesn't "infect" beyond the same process, but there's no such understanding about AGPL. COSS companies are exploiting that ambiguity to say "AGPL infects everything, pay us or die, and if you disagree we may sue you and we may win". And 90% of lawyers say "don't take the chance; just pay them".

Microsoft was consistently and openly opposed to open source back in the day. Now we have startups that are simultaneously claiming to be open source while using FUD to advance an essentially non-commercial interpretation of open source. It's not the same situation.

[madeofpalk]

> now pay us

I mean they summarised that are the very beginning of their post. They're not being shy about this. The entire post is about them making money.

> But I'll be honest with you: Briefer is a VC-backed company, and it must make money.