[zelcon]

Corps don't want to have to release the source code for their internal forks. They could also potentially be sued for everything they link using it because the linked binaries could be "derivative works" according to a judge who doesn't know anything.

[pwdisswordfishz]

They don't have to release source for internal forks.

[wyldfire]

They do if they're AGPL licensed and the internal form software is used to provide a user facing service.

[amszmidt]

But then it isn’t “internal”…

[zelcon]

It’s too hard to determine what pieces of your stack interact with public-facing services, particularly in a monorepo with thousands of developers. The effort involved and the legal risk if you get it wrong makes it an easy nope. Just ban AGPL.

[amszmidt]

The effort involved, and legal risk is exactly the same as for any Copyleft license. If you don't know what your stack is doing, that is the problem -- not the license.

[saagarjha]

I think you should get new lawyers if this is their understanding of how software licenses work.

[mgsloan2]

See for example https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

> Code licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) MUST NOT be used at Google.

[jenadine]

It’s their loss

[Defletter]

Is it? Because open source tools re-licensing themselves to be more permissive would seem to indicate whose loss it really is.

[michaelmrose]

This might indicate moreso that they believe they won't lose anything by the transition and users might ultimately benefit

[mistercheph]

Embrace, extend, extinguish. it could take about a century, but every software company (hardware maybe next century) is in the process of being swallowed by free software. Thats not to say people can’t carve out a niche and have balling corporate retreats for a while.. until the sleeping giant wakes up and rolls over you.

[zelcon]

Free software basically only exists because it’s subsidized by nonfree software. It also has no original ideas. Every piece of good free software is just a copy of something proprietary or some internal tool.

[Defletter]

You've just made a pretty outrageous claim without evidence that would require a lot of effort on my part to refute, so I'll just go with: if you say so.

[rerdavies]

I'm wondering if you've ever actually asked a real corporate lawyer for an opinion on anything relating to GPL licenses. The results are pretty consistent. I've made the trip on three occasions, and the response each time was: "this was not drafted by a lawyer, it's virtually ininterpretable, and it is wildly unpredictable what the consequences of using this software are."

[saagarjha]

Why do some companies engage with it then?

[amszmidt]

Eh, all the GNU family of licenses were drafted by lawyers.

Just using any Copyleft software has no legal consequences (copyleft licenses kick in when distributing, not using them).