[nothrabannosir]

I see hate for the licensing model they chose. But think of it this way: who is their target audience? Who would want a small, embeddable JS engine? I think they're targeting businesses who want to deploy node.js code on micro to small devices. Routers, NASes, that sort of thing.

In that light, it's great they even decided to publish the source under AGPL at all. They could just as well have kept it "all rights reserved".

[xavel]

And what if those companies wish to provide their software to customers? Enter a terrible hell of "how are we going to relicense our stuff", that'll most likely end up with said companies switching to a different library.

No, the GPL, especially the AGPL is inherently bad for libraries. Libraries, mind you, not software in general. Like I've written in my other comment, the LGPL solves this issue painlessly.

Besides that, node.js won't run with MuJS, because node.js depends on V8 and libevent. Unless some poor sod actually reimplements the entire nodejs stack... but I hope people are smarter than that. :-)

[nothrabannosir]

Guys, it's double licensed. You are describing exactly the point: they don't want companies to use this without paying. Pay, and you can redistribute it to your clients.

This is basically for-profit code from a for-profit company, with a side dish of "open source for open source projects." It's like... like Github. Like Travis-CI. Like QT.

[ralmidani]

> Guys, it's double licensed. You are describing exactly the point: they don't want companies to use this without paying. Pay, and you can redistribute it to your clients.

Or you can release your code under the AGPL and keep all your money.

> This is basically for-profit code from a for-profit company, with a side dish of "open source for open source projects." It's like... like Github. Like Travis-CI. Like QT.

This is not like Github. Github does not release all of the source code powering their app.

[nknighthb]

> And what if those companies wish to provide their software to customers?

They can abide by the free license, or pay for a different license. Or, yes, switch to a different library. They are not entitled to use this library, nor any other library.

> No, the GPL, especially the AGPL is inherently bad for libraries.

If this library were not available under any sort of open-source license, would you be making the same post, insisting it's "bad" for them not to give you free stuff?

[xavel]

>They can abide by the free license, or pay for a different license

Or... use a library that suffers none of these issues. :-)

My point is about the clause in the GPL that enforces developers to enclose the source of their entire software, not just the library. The LGPL however, does not require that, which is why the LGPL is also occasionally called "GNU Library License" (though the 'L' in LGPL stands for 'Lesser').

And lets not nitpick here, the GPL isn't exactly subtle about these things.

>If this library were not available under any sort of open-source license, would you be making the same post, insisting it's "bad" for them not to give you free stuff?

No. It's their right to choose whatever license they wish, but it's also my right to not choose their software.

[nknighthb]

> My point is about the clause in the GPL that enforces developers to enclose the source of their entire software, not just the library.

I'm well aware of it. Everybody is. It's a term of the license. Just like "You must pay us $5000 to use this library" would be.

> And lets not nitpick here, the GPL isn't exactly subtle about these things.

Nitpick about what? Subtle about what? What are you talking about?

> No. It's their right to choose whatever license they wish, but it's also my right to not choose their software.

It certainly is.

But you said it's "bad". But it wouldn't be "bad" if they hadn't made it available under a free license at all.

This seems like a hypocritical and extremely entitled attitude. Under what moral code is it bad to offer alternative prices for alternative terms?

[xavel]

> Nitpick about what? Subtle about what? What are you talking about?

The clause I mentioned. I'm sorry if I was ambigious, but there were discussions in the past hovering about how the GPL still allows commercial software, and such. Yes, of course the GPL allows you to make good money, but in just about every example given, the actual bulk of the money isn't made from the software, but from the hardware the software just so happens to be running on (i.e., modems, smartphones, branded computers, mainframes, chipcards, etc).

> Under what moral code is it bad to offer alternative prices for alternative terms?

By claiming to offer Free Software™ with a very restrictive copyleft license with one hand, and expecting a 3-4 figure with the other in case you plan to use it on anything else than free software.

It's a little bit like imprisoning someone for their own safety, and expecting money if they wish to breath a little air.

I never claimed that there's anything wrong with the GPL/AGPL, but I do claim that there are cases where the GPL is a good choice, and then there are cases where it is not.

[nknighthb]

If your problem is one of semantics, please be honest about that up-front, instead of instigating drawn-out arguments.

[rossy]

The AGPL is a pain though. MuJS was going to be used to add JS scripting to mpv, but the patch has been put on hold since the devs realised it was AGPL licensed and it could cause license compatibility issues with compiled binaries or libmpv users. I don't think MuJS will be used by anyone outside of GhostScript until they change their license to a more reasonable one.

[have_humility]

It's already used with MuPDF, and things that embed it. I was eyeballing it last week in the source tree for the EBookDroid fork "Document Viewer".

[maemre]

Routers already use GPL'd software (Linux for example). However, I don't know effects of using AGPL over GPL in this case. I can see that without a linking exemption saying that _linked_ JS code is not subject to license terms, it wouldn't allow using proprietary JS code. But, what are the consequences of choosing AGPL over GPL?

An irrelevant anecdotal note: Router firms can make distribution of source code harder to circumvent GPL. A router firm that a friend works distributes source code using CDs. So if you bought a router and wanting the source code for modified kernel etc., you send your request using email/telephone/mail/fax and get your own copy via snail mail.

[copx]

>I see hate for the licensing model they chose. But think of it this way: who is their target audience?

People willing to pay for a commercial license.

Many companies which want to sell software release a GPL-ed version as a kind of demo (and being able to add the "open source" buzz word to the description of their product does not hurt either).

That the (A)GPL makes this library unusable for most people is the reason why they chose that license; not because of Free Software idealism but because of commercial interests.