[lolinder]

> AGPLv3 is perfect for kernel and userspace tools because, while it doesn't guarantee licensing revenues, as soon as they do anything to modify it they have to release those changes to ANY users of the system, whether downstream distributors or simply users of the network services they provide.

This is actually fairly ambiguous in the text. It says "if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version". This is fairly straightforward when applied to a database—if you modify an AGPL database and offer it as a hosted version then your users are obviously interacting with it over the network—but much less straightforward when talking about an AGPL program that doesn't intentionally build in network connectivity.

The GPL FAQ addresses this provision [0] and it seems to support a more conservative reading. My understanding from the FAQ is that a Program that is not "expressly designed to accept user requests and send responses over a network" derives no benefit from being AGPL vs GPL, even if a web app interacts with that AGPL code over IPC or similar.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AGPLv3InteractingR...

[jraph]

Yep, I think the agplv3 behaves like the gplv3 for programs that are not network services.

With the twist that if your non networked, agplv3 program happens to contain code that's interesting to build a network service, this code can only be used under the agplv3 :-)

[lolinder]

> this code can only be used under the agplv3 :-)

This code can only be used to make a derived work under the AGPLv3. What constitutes a derived work is still... complicated.

I wouldn't risk this in a production setting for a real business just out of caution, but my reading of the license would suggest that you'd be perfectly fine to wrap AGPLv3 code in a web service and then have your own code interact with that web service. Release the wrapper service as AGPL, but then the rest can be proprietary.

The main protection that AGPL gives isn't legal, it's that you scare most legal departments away just because it's such a weird license with no established precedent.

[jraph]

> I wouldn't risk this

This seems like a technical workaround for a legal requirement. Indeed, that seems risky xD