“Getting AWS’ed”, that should go in the dictionary!
In companies I’ve worked at in the past, during every round of fund raising, as part of the due diligence, lawyers would ask for the licenses of all software packages we use. And when AGPL showed up in the list, they’d specifically ask how it’s integrated with the rest of the system, and evaluate it with more scrutiny. In hindsight, this makes total sense - they were just trying to make sure we were compliant with what AGPL calls for.
But the fact that AGPL software called for extra scrutiny from lawyers, became a stumbling block and added just enough friction to adopting additional AGPL software in the stack.
Now being on the other side of the table as an OSS product, this is painful to watch.
I don’t have a grand plan to solve these misconceptions yet. Hoping that publicly talking about this and driving awareness about GPL and AGPL might help. Open to ideas!
For situations like this add "for $10k you get a commercial license". (Pick whatever price you think is right). Put that in your readme for visibility.
If they are paying lawyers $500/hr to review licenses for peace of mind, they can afford $10k for commercial license.
If they don't want to pay $10k then they are freeloaders and you're not loosing anything.
"The SQLite source code is in the public domain, and is free for use by anyone and for any purpose. No license is required. However, some users desire a license so that they can have warranty of title, or just because their company lawyers say they need one. A perpetual license and warranty of title for the core SQLite source code is available for this purpose."
Judging by the (rather shallow) knowledge I gained from this thread, it seems AGPL is more suited for FOSS projects that intend to sell as a standalone package like Plausible, rather than some add on to some Corporates codebase. In that regard, it seems like a fitting license in this case.
Then again, I don't really know much about the OSS landscape.
In companies I’ve worked at in the past, during every round of fund raising, as part of the due diligence, lawyers would ask for the licenses of all software packages we use. And when AGPL showed up in the list, they’d specifically ask how it’s integrated with the rest of the system, and evaluate it with more scrutiny. In hindsight, this makes total sense - they were just trying to make sure we were compliant with what AGPL calls for.
But the fact that AGPL software called for extra scrutiny from lawyers, became a stumbling block and added just enough friction to adopting additional AGPL software in the stack.
Now being on the other side of the table as an OSS product, this is painful to watch.
I don’t have a grand plan to solve these misconceptions yet. Hoping that publicly talking about this and driving awareness about GPL and AGPL might help. Open to ideas!