> if AGPL is so evil, who made it for what kind of purpose from the beginning? You give me an impression that AGPL is totally wrong and shouldn’t be born.

Then I have succeeded in conveying my opinion. :-)

I think it was made with good intentions, but without thinking through the repercussions. It's made for a world where everything is opensource, and everyone has incentives to keep it that way.

But it's a fantasy world that doesn't exist. If all open source OSs were AGPL, then that would not force Google to start publishing their internal drivers. It would force Google to write their own Unix-like OS. It's a lot of work, yes, but especially if it's only for your own purposes it's not that hard. And they've done it before.

> Why you have impression that AGPL was born to let people not use the software?

Like I said any serious (I don't mean commercial) use of software requires automation and other surrounding stuff to make it work in a given environment. Yes, you can run MongoDB for fun at home, but considering that I've written scripts for my Ubiquity access points to collect some data, I'm glad that their software isn't AGPL. Even in my home use I would be forced to publish those scripts. Because it's not just me the legal entity that uses my access points. It's also my friends and family. So I'm in scope

So like I said and tried to give as much proof as possible for, there is only two ways to use AGPL software: 1) Violate the license. (by not publishing everything that touches the software) 2) Purchase another license.

(2) is usually not possible. Most software is not dual licensed. (1) is not really using the license. If you don't agree to the license then you have no right to it. It's essentially software piracy.

So neither (1) nor (2) is actually using AGPL.

To the extent the software in question is used, it's not used under AGPL.

But I was mostly responding to "so everyone can just buy a commercial license" (but see (2)), which just means AGPL is only useful insofar as it doesn't exist.

> Like MongoDB, it selected AGPL from the beginning, and many people were using it (so you can’t say AGPL stop people to use MongoDB)

MongoDB is probably the most popular, yeah. Note that OpenBSD still uses POVRay 3.6, because 3.7 changed to AGPL.

I still maintain that most people who use MongoDB are violating the license, so they're not really "using" the AGPL.

> until some big commercial companies began to deploy it in cloud and violate AGPL (refuse to open source). This hurt the protocol and MongoDB, so MongoDB decided to change the license to a more explicit and strict license written by themselves to rule explicitly that if you deploy the MongoDB in cloud you should be open source

I was not aware of this. So you're saying AGPL failed at the one thing it attempted to do, which is to plug the so-called "hole" of cloud?

> From this point of view AGPL or the more strict MongoDB protocol find a good balance between open source and commercial usage.

"Open source" in the sense that the source is available for viewing? Yes. But most of the time that's not what that means.

From wikipedia:

> Open-source software is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.

"For any purpose". That's freedom zero, which AGPL doesn't have.

Same with these recent licenses I've seen where the author has said "GPL but can not be used by the police", due to the author's political views. That's not what "open source" or "free software" means.

> Please tell me if MongoDB uses more free software style license, like GPL, Apache, MIT, I guess many companies will use it in non open source style without violating the protocol

Probably yes. I know at least one FAANG company that has purchased a non-AGPL license of MongoDB. But like I said that's not always possible. And my initial comment of "nope nope nope" is the legal stance frow actual tech lawyers I've discussed this with.

But curcially: This is intentional! Open source explicitly allows use for any purpose, even if that purpose is to interact with non-opensource. That's not a bug!

> If MongoDB can not live a good life, who will contribute to it, maintain it, help user continuously?

But this is two different questions. As I see it AGPL is about politics, not money. Most AGPL is not dual licensed.

As for maintaining. If you're a company (say Google) that runs GPL software (say the Linux kernel), then it's better to upstream your patches, when they are not specific to your proprietary internal systems, than to fork the code and have to manually apply upstream's patches.

Hell, the BSDs are still alive, and they even allow redistributing the binaries without providing source code!

The money question is a real one since free software began, but AGPL doesn't solve it, nor did it ever even attempt to solve it.

> I am glad that google doesn’t like AGPL. To me this implies that the thing, that is not liked by big company, could be interesting.

This is a terrible argument. I'm sure Trump also doesn't like it. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. You should look at why they don't like it, and see if those reasons apply to you.

Google also doesn't like global warming or covid-19, but I don't see you out there releasing freon or licking ventilators.

Also note that this means none of the, what, 100'000 engineers working for Google are allowed to touch your software. No, not even contribute to it on their own time (with one exception: https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/). Your community will shrink just because of that.

> AGPL just prevents the big companies , like google, amazon, to use open source software for free.

No, it prevents everyone from using it, as described.

Also: Using software for free (in both senses of the word) is literally what opensource is for.

"free software", "for any purpose", beautiful target. But maybe it can not be achieved in one step.

People select a license for purpose. No matter what is the purpose, the developer is free to choose, the user is free to accept or deny. If the license really brings some big hurt, people might change later.

Yup. There's nothing illegal about this private contract. I'm just saying it's a lose-lose license for both parties.

For authors: AGPL is counterproductive to its stated purpose, and will only drive away users and contributors. AGPL is not "open source" or "free software". If dual-licensed then you are essentially releasing commercial software. And that's fine. But own up to that. If not dual-licensed then pretty much every user will violate your license. So what was the license good for?

For users: There is no practical way to use AGPL software without violating the license. Everything you do with AGPL software incurs a huge legal liability. It is not open source or free software. If it's dual licensed, then pretend only the other license exists. If it's not, then pretend this software doesn't exist, and move along.

Actually, there is one way for authors to derive value from AGPL. It's not ethical, but it exists. Release your AGPL software, and wait for reports of a company using it. Then sue them. Because they are pretty much guaranteed to be in violation.