Affero General Public License - AGPL

Jul 27, 2008 – 10:58 by Ryan

There are a lot of open source licenses available. Based on what you want to accomplish, choosing the correct license is important. What people don’t commonly understand is the difference between open source and the freedom to do whatever you want with the source. There has been a bit of controversy surrounding the Affero General Public License so we decided to do a bit of research on the license.

In a nutshell, the core concept behind AGPL is that if your applications links to an AGPL licensed library and you make your product/service available via a network service, then your application must also be open source.

We reviewed the following pages in our research:

• GPLv3 and Software as a Service
• GNU Affero Genenal Public License
• Affero General Public License (Wikipedia)
• Network Service (Wikipedia)
• Application Service Provider (Wikipedia)
• GNU General Public License (Wikipedia)
• Google’s festering problem with the AGPL
• The AGPL in Simple Words

Image courtesy of the Free Software Foundation.

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