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by josephcsible·5y ago·view on hn ↗
This seems to lump relicensing to better FOSS licenses like AGPL in with relicensing to bad non-FOSS licenses like the Commons Clause, SSPL, BSL, Redis Source Available License, and Anti-996 License. You're right about the former, but the latter is screwing over the community.
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Serious question: How is the community impacted by SSPl, BSL, etc? The average end-user who makes no modifications and is not reselling as-a-service is fine, there is no additional burden with either AGPL or the non-OSI-compliant licenses.

How does the AGPL screw over the community less than the other licenses? AGPL is problematic for a slew of reasons, lots of corporations (whether or not you agree that for-profit enterprises make up the bulk of the "community" is a separate discussion) disallow it entirely (mostly thanks to Google's precedent).

The community is impacted because there isn't an intellectual commons to build from.

The OSI or FSF-approved licenses form an ecosystem. I can have a project which mixes AGPL, GPL, and BSD code. I can make that part of the next version of Ubuntu. I can borrow bits of code. It all works together. If the goal is to have a computer running free software, AGPL builds towards that goal. If the goal is to use the code in new and unexpected ways, AGPL builds there.

The non-OSI licenses are walled gardens. Even the ones which nominally allow remixing require me to drop a few grand on a lawyer before remixing them (more grand if it's international).

AGPL is toxic to some corporations for mixing into their proprietary projects, but the commercial dual-license takes care of that. Most corporations don't mind spending money.

AGPL also gives a long-term sustainable pathway if the original vendor goes under or goes evil.

I don't see how AGPL is really problematic in any way for something like Grafana.

Most people, and companies, that use this will just run an unmodified Grafana container, maybe with some plugins (not of their own). AGPL doesn't come into play here (the software is not modified).

This change would really only impact a company that takes Grafana, puts a bunch of patches on top of it and wants to offer that as a SaaS. Those guys could still even do that, they'd just have to publish their patches. Or, quite possibly, just pay for a commercial license - a lot of GPL/AGPL software is actually dual-licensed, with more ore less "dowhateveryawant"-style, paid licenses.

All of this sounds fair to me.

Blocking competition among providers of your app as a service is a burden for users. Users would benefit from being allowed to use the provider which best meets their needs, rather than being forced to use the provider who happens to be allied with the copyright owner.

AGPL tries to ensure that third-party providers are at least sharing their development efforts to the same extent that those efforts were shared with them. AGPL doesn't try to give anyone an unfair advantage at providing the software as a service, not even the copyright owner.