Since we have announced that we are going to open source our Digital Asset Management under the Affero General Public License (AGPL) we have had some questions about the licensing, meaning what the AGPL exactly is.
The place to start is with the “ASP loophole” in popular open source licenses, including the GPLv3. Under the GPL, of course, if you distribute software you must distribute the source. But what if you’re an application service provider - someone who provides a service over the web using open source software? In that case, you’re not distributing the software, and you don’t have to redistribute the source code or the modifications you’ve made to it. This has upset some open source advocates, who see large corporations (including Google) using software developed by the open source community without giving back anything in return.
The AGPL attempts to correct this situation by introducing one new clause to the GPLv3. Under the AGPL, if you use open source software to run an ASP, you have to make the source available via HTTP to anyone who asks. Software licensed this way keeps its “open sourceness” whether used locally or on a network.
So here you go. When our system is released you will be free to use it on any server you like, but if you are using it to sell any services or going to host the application for others you will have to open source the components. We think this is simply fair, since we have put over 3 years in development and companies that simply take open source software and sell it as their own is ethical not right.
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[...] anandeep wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptSince we have announced that we are going to open source our Digital Asset Management under the Affero General Public License (AGPL) we have had some questions about the licensing, meaning what the AGPL exactly is. … [...]
“companies that simply take open source software and sell it as their own is ethical not right”
I agree with you if companies are selling open source software as their own, but it’s fine for companies to take open source software, host it, and ask for money for the service. 0 hours of development required, but a service is still offered. If I want to host git/subversion repos online and charge for the service, that’s fine. If I want to host an open source webapp and charge for the service, I think that’s okay too. If I make modifications to it, I should release those modifications back to the community and all’s well.
Actually, I had *no idea* that you could take GPL webapps, modify them, and host them without releasing the source! This makes me want to re-license things as AGPL, altho I explicitly use the GPLv2 … I wonder if there’s an AGPL that’s compatible with GPLv2 instead of v3?
Thanks for the AGPL summary!
The point that bothers me most, is that any company could take the application, embed it into their hosting-software and sell it for big bucks. Of course, customers don’t mind, and most likely the developers never will realize it, but it is not correct.
So far, I am not seeing a AGPL for GPLv2. What makes you NOT use the GPLv3?
I haven’t switched to the GPLv3 because … well, if it’s not good enough for Linus … ?
That said, I don’t forsee the Tivoization of some random web software of mine ( nor could I imagine caring if such a thing happened ) so, after researching the AGPL some more, it sounds like something very worth supporting and I’ll release future web software under it and recommend that others do the same.
I didn’t realize that anyone had been modifying GPL’d web apps and selling them as a service without releasing the code! Are there any well known examples of this happening?
I will say, however, that … so long as companies release the source of their modifications back to the community … I have no problem with companies selling open souce web apps as services and I think that’s a silly thing for anyone to be upset about. Isn’t the whole point of X web application for people to use it? Let’s say that I *love* Trac or Redmine, the software project management web apps … so I wanna start hosting them for a fee. So what? People are paying for the service, not the application. If they wanted to, they could host it themselves, but maybe I assure them 99.999% uptime and backups, etc.
Example: the Trac site has a list of the commercial providers of Trac hosting @ http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/CommercialServices. You don’t see Trac complaining … I’m sure they’re happy to see paid services that let people enjoy using their software without the hassle of configuring it, keeping it up-to-date, etc.
Hello Remi
My last comment sounded wrong. What I meant to say, is that I don’t mind that companies take open source software and sell the hosting, what I mean is that it “could be” that they do take open source software, modify it and don’t have to open source the modified code. This is possible under GPLv2 and GPLv3.
I don’t have an example of this happening, but I am sure it is being done. Somewhere down in Google, some engineer has for sure taken some open source piece, modified it and now is being used in some projects of theirs. The community has never seen the modifed code, nor has it the right to do so. With AGPL this should not be possible anymore.
Just yesterday I saw that the AGPL is getting movement. They expect that until the end of this year 5000 projects converted to AGPL. I don’t have the source of this information right now.