Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 20:28 UTC (Fri) by Deleted user 129183 (guest, #129183)
In reply to: Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation by NYKevin
Parent article: Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

> Seeing as none of the software involved is AGPL'd

Well, I guess that it’s a nice case for always using AGPL instead of any other copyleft licence.

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 3, 2020 1:39 UTC (Sat) by droundy (subscriber, #4559) [Link] (1 responses)

Except that AGPL isn't even GPL compatible, so you're splitting the copyleft ecosystem. :(

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 3, 2020 3:54 UTC (Sat) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

GPLv3 is compatible with AGPLv3 via an explicit compatibility clause:

> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License [i.e. GPLv3], you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the special requirements of the GNU Affero General Public License, section 13, concerning interaction through a network will apply to the combination as such.

AGPLv3 has a similar clause:

> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License [i.e. AGPLv3], you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

Based on my non-lawyer non-expert opinion, it appears that each part remains under its own license, and the whole has to comply with all of the terms and conditions of both licenses. That seems really weird but potentially workable, if you're careful about tracking where everything came from.