Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

Posted May 2, 2025 21:06 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: Suprised we aren't seeing more of this by mgulick
Parent article: Redis is now available under the AGPLv3 open source license (Redis blog)

As I explain in another comment,[1] that interpretation creates such an enormous loophole that it makes the whole section de facto optional to comply with. That cannot be the FSF's true intention, so I do not believe it is a natural reading of the AGPL in context (but I suppose a court might apply the four-corners rule and read it that way regardless).

Summary of that comment: If it doesn't bind you when you write the code in the first place, then any random other person could run the code, and they have no section 13 obligations because they did not "modify the Program." So that leaves us with three options, all of them bad: 1) You are not allowed to remove the source offer at all, 2) if you remove the source offer, you accept unlimited liability for anyone running the code from now until the end of time, or 3) the whole section is so easy to circumvent that it is pointless - you might as well just use the GPL instead and save everybody the headache of worrying about (1) and (2).

[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/1019820/

Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

Posted May 2, 2025 22:33 UTC (Fri) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for your analysis. Do you think a better version of the License would have phrased the passage as follows instead:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you run a modified version of the Program, this modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network ...

Or would that still lead to similar or new issues?

Fixing the AGPL text to match intention

Posted May 4, 2025 10:31 UTC (Sun) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I don't think there's a fix that meets the FSF's goals. Section 9 makes it clear that the licensee is not bound by the licence simply by running the program; section 13's intent is along the lines of "if you run this program, people with network access to it must be able to get at its source".

And that's the heart of the problem with the AGPL; the FSF wants to both place an obligation on you to supply source if you run the program and give other people access to it, and also to not place any obligations on you if you simply run the program. You can't resolve that by tweaking section 13; you need to also change section 9 to indicate that the requirement to provide source applies to everyone who runs the program and allows someone else to access it over the network.

This conflict, BTW, is not a trivial one; it cuts to the heart of the FSF's Four Essential Freedoms, which define the intention behind Free Software. The challenge the AGPL runs into is that it's trying to restrict Freedom 0 for those people who have access to the software so that more people get access to the software and can exercise the Four Freedoms on their own machines, but it tries to do this without placing too much burden on people exercising Freedom 0.

Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

Posted Jun 28, 2025 16:15 UTC (Sat) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

If I write the code, I am free to do with it as I like. If you get the code from me, I can place restrictions on what you are allowed to do with it.