AGPL Blog Post Discussion

[gondolyr]

This post was made with the following blog post in mind: https://blog.paradedb.com/pages/agpl.
Prior license discussion (Closed): https://github.com/paradedb/paradedb/issues/794 .

There are points brought up in the blog post not mentioned in the previous issue, just due to a difference in when these were posted.

Keep in mind that I'm not a legal expert and these are my interpretations of the AGPL.

1.

What is AGPL?

[...] This provision, called the copyleft provision, ensures that modifications remain open and discourages proprietary forks.

This is a technicality: The GPL and AGPL don't just discourage proprietary modifications, they forbid them. The GPL has a loophole that allows software to be proprietary if it is interacted over a network, a thing the AGPL covers in section 13. "Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.".

2.

AGPL

Future-Proof: Thanks to the copyleft provision, cloud vendors cannot easily resell our project without our consent. [...]

The AGPL states that downstream users and providers are permitted to modify resell the software without the original author's permission.

See AGPL section 4. "Conveying Verbatim Copies." and AGPL section 5. "Conveying Modified Source Versions."

Section 4:

You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.

Section 5 (extends section 4):

You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: [...]

Also see AGPL section 10. "Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.":

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.

The GPL FAQ ("Why does the GPL permit users to publish their modified versions?") reinforces this as well:

A crucial aspect of free software is that users are free to cooperate. It is absolutely essential to permit users who wish to help each other to share their bug fixes and improvements with other users.

Some have proposed alternatives to the GPL that require modified versions to go through the original author. As long as the original author keeps up with the need for maintenance, this may work well in practice, but if the author stops (more or less) to do something else or does not attend to all the users' needs, this scheme falls down. Aside from the practical problems, this scheme does not allow users to help each other.

3.

CONTRIBUTING.md

According to this document,

By contributing to ParadeDB, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.

However, your Contributor License Agreement (CLA) states the following:

Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Company and to recipients of software distributed by the Company a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works.

In section 2. "Basic Permissions." of the AGPL, it says

Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under the conditions stated below. Sublicensing is not allowed; section 10 makes it unnecessary.

I believe because of the CLA requirement, this is legally allowed, however, it is disingenuous to contributors to claim that their contributions are made under the AGPL when the CLA is allowing ParadeDB to sublicense their work under a non-free commercial license. The CONTRIBUTING document should clearly reflect the CLA's language of contributors forfeiting the rights granted by the AGPL when distributed under a commercial license granted by ParadeDB.

---

The GPL, and its derivatives, are designed with the software users in mind, not the developers. The restriction of the (A)GPL to not be able to make proprietary copies and derivatives is in the interest of the users so that users can continue to view, modify, distribute, and sell the program, no matter who they get it from.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms

The four essential freedoms

A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms: [1]

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

[philippemnoel]

Hi @gondolyr!

Thank you for opening this. I'm happy to chime in:

1. We meant "it discourages proprietary forks" due to their need to be open and AGPL-licensed.

2. Correct, but they need to be AGPL-licensed, which prevents organizations who do not wish to abide by this restriction from reselling it, hence our wording.

3. That's fair, thank you for pointing this out. I'll make a PR to more explicitly state this. We aim to be fully upfront and I appreciate you pointing areas of our documentation which can be clarified. See docs: Clarify CONTRIBUTING.md #1538.

Thank you!