Comments on: Affero General Public License – AGPL http://deftlabs.com/2008/07/affero-general-public-license-agpl/ Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:35:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Bob Carpenter http://deftlabs.com/2008/07/affero-general-public-license-agpl/comment-page-1/#comment-412 Bob Carpenter Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:26:03 +0000 http://deftlabs.com/?p=83#comment-412 Breck (and lawyers) crafted <a href="http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/licenses/lingpipe-license-1.txt" rel="nofollow">a new kind of royalty-free license</a> for LingPipe because he didn't think GPL was strong enough to protect Alias-i's business interests. The goal was similar to the Affero GPL, but the license focused on the data. Breck didn't want people using our product to process a ton of proprietary data for free. On the other hand, Breck was willing to risk companies putting up servers based on our software and open-source data. So in some ways (server deployment), our license is to the right (in the copyleft sense) of AGPL, and in other ways (data), to the left. Over the past five or six years, Alias-i has taken a ton of flak for LingPipe having a "non-standard" license with no official "open source" stamp of approval. For instance, Alias-i can't contribute to Java One's open source track or O'Reilly open source events. To make life simpler, I've been urging Breck to switch LingPipe over to the AGPL in our next major release. I think it'll probably happen. It would've been been interesting to see what would've happened to MySQL if they'd gone with AGPL. I'm guessing far less uptake. Breck (and lawyers) crafted a new kind of royalty-free license for LingPipe because he didn’t think GPL was strong enough to protect Alias-i’s business interests.

The goal was similar to the Affero GPL, but the license focused on the data. Breck didn’t want people using our product to process a ton of proprietary data for free. On the other hand, Breck was willing to risk companies putting up servers based on our software and open-source data. So in some ways (server deployment), our license is to the right (in the copyleft sense) of AGPL, and in other ways (data), to the left.

Over the past five or six years, Alias-i has taken a ton of flak for LingPipe having a “non-standard” license with no official “open source” stamp of approval. For instance, Alias-i can’t contribute to Java One’s open source track or O’Reilly open source events.

To make life simpler, I’ve been urging Breck to switch LingPipe over to the AGPL in our next major release. I think it’ll probably happen.

It would’ve been been interesting to see what would’ve happened to MySQL if they’d gone with AGPL. I’m guessing far less uptake.

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