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by jacobparker 4783 days ago
> because customers cannot prove what technology stack is being used.

Morals aside, this is not typically the case. You can legally run GPL software as a service without contributing back, for example. The AGPL fixes this loophole but as far as I am aware is seldom used. (IANAL etc.)
2 comments
_delirium 4783 days ago
AGPL isn't exceptionally common, but it's used in a reasonable number of SaaS type niches, where the other common license is "don't release source at all". For example, Launchpad and Gitorious are AGPL, while their main competitor, Github, is closed-source.

Ghostscript is probably the most widely used piece of AGPL software. That one's driven mostly by their dual-licensing strategy (they want proprietary SaaS providers to buy the commercial version of Ghostscript).

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dspillett 4783 days ago
One major complication with that for modern web applications is that many don't consider sending javascript to the client as distributing the software (as it is not distributed as a whole) which most putting such software out there under the GPL would assume that the client side code counts as distributing the library to the end user just as much as sending it in a compiled executable would.
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