[cinericius]

Not a lawyer, but my understanding is there is a strong feeling that AGPL can be roughly ignored if a service provider provides some level of indirection (e.g. a proxy) between the user and the software. Then, the software is somehow not being accessed over a network and thus they are not required to release the source.

[barnabee]

I have a strong feeling that speaking to a lawyer might reveal that to be untrue

[gpm]

I have a strong feeling you would be told "we don't know, it's never been tested in court, there's a chance you would win and a chance you would lose on that argument".

[swiftcoder]

Yeah, but lawyers say that about just about everything

[shakna]

Not just a level of indirection. The "substantial features" of the code need to not be directly exposed.

So if you had some AGPL OCR tool you were using, you could use it, but not in a way the user sees that text. Generate audio from it and expose the sound? Probably fine.

[gpm]

My understanding of the theory that they're advocating is that the AGPL requires that when you modify AGPL software you modify it to provide an offer of its source.

And that you can comply with that completely, run the software, and then have a proxy in front that strips that offer without violating the letter of the license.

And if that theory works I think "substantial features" of the code could be directly (but for the indirection of that proxy) exposed.

[shakna]

That would violate the license.

> However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.

and

> Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License.

"Convey" is the key word there. You _must_ convey the license. Stripping it out, is not conveying it. Why is it automatic? Because under the AGPL, the license is a part of the work itself. You cannot remove it or modify it, without breaking the license, and thus having no right to modify it in the first place.

[gpm]

> Each time you convey a covered work

You didn't convey a covered work by using it to respond to a response or anywhere else in my hypothetical - and indeed that part of the license exactly matches the GPLv3. The relevant portion of the license is rather

> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, 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 by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.

[shakna]

So... You know a proxy is not legal... But felt the need to make me explain which facets it would cover...?

Yeah, I'm not continuing this convetsation.

[gpm]

I know nothing of the sort.

I know what section of the license is relevant to network requests, why the section of license you cited is not, and that a proxy stripping offers of source does not seem to violate the text (though it certainly violates the spirit) of the license. I do not know how a court would react to such an attempt.

I agree that I'm done with this conversation though.