AGPL is the most restrictive and business-oriented license I am aware of. Because the business has the freedom to re-release the software under a different license to suit whatever needs they might have in the future. But "community" users are utterly caged and shackled by its terms. And if the project should be abandoned by the owning company, that leaves the code essentially unusable -- too much liability/restriction for someone else to pickup the torch, since they don't have an actually-free license or relicensing freedom.
The AGPL ensures a closed system of contributions for the business. So even with exceptions, it seems inaccurate to characterize/use it as a community license. And let's be fair, the whole reason you would choose AGPL is to mitigate business risk -- nothing to do with a community. If you want people to be actually free to use and modify something, you would choose a different license (BSD, MIT, Apache, etc).
Totally agree on the AGPL, it's an antiquated license designed for old models of software distribution. There isn't an approved OSI model that fits SaaS distribution without giving up all IP rights. While I'd like to live in a world where we don't need to get paid for our work, that's not reality.
If we want to have options to build open source software and distribute it without working for an Oracle or RedHat we need a license that allows us to share and work openly for the sake of innovation while still retaining some way of selling that software without giving up all the IP. It doesn't have to be the only license option, BSD, MIT and Apache are great for pure community building but we need another option that's approved and monitored by a body like the OSI.
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Great debate topic. Here's my perspective.
AGPL is the most restrictive and business-oriented license I am aware of. Because the business has the freedom to re-release the software under a different license to suit whatever needs they might have in the future. But "community" users are utterly caged and shackled by its terms. And if the project should be abandoned by the owning company, that leaves the code essentially unusable -- too much liability/restriction for someone else to pickup the torch, since they don't have an actually-free license or relicensing freedom.
The AGPL ensures a closed system of contributions for the business. So even with exceptions, it seems inaccurate to characterize/use it as a community license. And let's be fair, the whole reason you would choose AGPL is to mitigate business risk -- nothing to do with a community. If you want people to be actually free to use and modify something, you would choose a different license (BSD, MIT, Apache, etc).
Totally agree on the AGPL, it's an antiquated license designed for old models of software distribution. There isn't an approved OSI model that fits SaaS distribution without giving up all IP rights. While I'd like to live in a world where we don't need to get paid for our work, that's not reality.
If we want to have options to build open source software and distribute it without working for an Oracle or RedHat we need a license that allows us to share and work openly for the sake of innovation while still retaining some way of selling that software without giving up all the IP. It doesn't have to be the only license option, BSD, MIT and Apache are great for pure community building but we need another option that's approved and monitored by a body like the OSI.