[License-discuss] You need to pay to access AGPL3 scripts?

[Ben Tilly]

The downside of the GPL for networked programs is that someone can
receive the program, modify it to strip references to you out of the
output, improve it, and then host a competitor.  There is no legal
issue as long as they don't redistribute.

The AGPL is supposed to avoid this issue.  Because now they have to
acknowledge you, adn let you see their improvements.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 1:55 PM, David Woolley
<forums at david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:
> On 10/06/14 22:26, Kuno Woudt wrote:
>
>> I assume FullContentRSS has the copyright on their own software, and can
>> license it as they want.  Including selling it to you under AGPLv3,
>> while not offering a download themselves for their users.
>
>
> I find it difficult to work out why someone would use the AGPL unless there
> was an upstream AGPL constraint or the wanted the software to be free of
> charge to users of their service.
>
> The only thought I had was that it was to put competitors at a disadvantage,
> as they would have to provide free source, but that doesn't really hold
> water.
>
> As far as I can see, for someone who didn't want to maximise availability of
> the code and wasn't under an AGPL constraint from upstream it would be
> better to use the plain GPL.
>
>
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