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by streptomycin 4660 days ago
It's more direct and clear to state the real problem. The real problem isn't the AGPL or the GPLv3, as both of those licenses can be very good in the right context. The real problem is copyright assignment to companies like Canonical, as in practice that is equivalent to dual licensing where the second license is "let this company do whatever the fuck they want".
1 comments

As I said, the intentions are good, but in practice these licenses are used as an actual incentive for companies to purchase the commercial alternative for redistribution.
But that's only true for a small minority of GPLv3 software. The exact same small minority that requires copyright assignment to a for-profit corporation.

Saying "licenses such as AGPL and GPLv3 are hurting open-source" is complete and utter FUD. A non-FUD way of saying it would be something like, "copyright assignment to for-profit corporations hurts the free software movement".

If there is no copyright assignment to a mischievous corporation, then GPLv3 is practically strictly superior to GPLv2 in terms of software freedom.