[License-discuss] Question about AGPLv3 with a Plugin Exception

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
>>> Please keep in mind that if your application incorporates or relies upon
>>> any other code (to which you do not hold the copyrights) that is also
>>> licensed under the AGPL, you cannot grant an exception (really, an
>>> 'additional permission') on your code which is combined with it, since
>>> you can't grant that same additional permission on the third-party code
>>> you are using.

Kevin is — of course — correct, but I did take Joel's original inquiry as
asking on behalf of a project that's just getting started (and/or just about
to be released), and in that situation, it's likely they are in touch with
all the copyright holders.  But, I agree with Kevin that Joel must first
check Kevin's point above as a threshold question.

On the three examples Joel found:

This one doesn't seem like it has any additional permissions:

> https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/HEAD/LICENSING.md

Did I miss something?

> https://docs.shopware.com/en/shopware-5-en/tutorials-and-faq/agpl

This one seems more like a statement of "intent to provide an additional
permission later" than an *actual* additional permission.  Does their code
repository have an actual additional permission present?

> https://github.com/translate5/translate5/blob/develop/plugin-exception.txt

Prima facie, this one seems "just ok" — the problem is that it's very
specific to the software in question, and has some ambiguities.  It's hard
for me to recommend its use because of that.  I'm also curious what Richard
Fontana thinks.

Generally speaking, when drafting additional permissions, the true art is
finding a way to make it general enough that it has more than one-off
usefulness but not so general that it completely eviscerates the copyleft
requirements of the main license.

Having been a key drafter of the Classpath Exception, the GCC RTL Exception,
and Web Template Output Additional Permission (WTO-AP, used by the Houdini
project), I have found that additional permission drafting is sometimes even
more difficult than primary license drafting.  I have various complaints
about the outcome of those three additional permissions — even though I have
intimate knowledge why they are ultimately worded the way that they are.

The theory of 'additional permissions' is better than the practice.  For
everything but the most trivial, you'll need drafting help of someone with
serious experience drafting copyleft licenses to get an outcome that doesn't
just confuse people and/or eviscerate the copyleft entirely.

Furthermore, folks who are really interested in copyleft and its policy
goals, as I am, are going to ask you this question first: *Why* do you feel
that you must permit proprietary plugins to your application in the first
place?  What is the policy goal you're trying to achieve, and why does a pure
application of the license not achieve it?

We asked these questions first before helping the Houdini project create the
WTO-AP, and I think the outcome was much better for it, because we were able
to narrow in on the exact area that required the AP.

Finally, keep in mind that while additional permissions are fully permitted
by the GPLv3 family of licenses, they are used in practice so rarely that
users are usually quite confused by them.  Thus, if your reason for adding an
Additional Permission is to "gain adoption" from folks who don't like the
AGPLv3, it's likely to have the opposite effect.

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 3:07 PM McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:
> > You might want to check out the SPDX lists of exceptions:
> > https://spdx.org/licenses/exceptions-index.html

This is a strange suggestion as answer to Joel's query, most importantly
because AFAICT none of the additional permissions listed there are drafted
for AGPL, but also because the list is just a tiny subset of the additional
permissions that are widely used.

  -- bkuhn