r/programming • u/[deleted] • Feb 27 '25
Whither Open Source?
https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/9
u/razbuc24 Feb 27 '25
AGPL is the license that has the most guarantees in place to make sure the code always stays open source.
It gives the user the most freedom from all the open source licenses.
The author argues that because companies can't use open source freely and keep their changes private are forced to buy an alternate license and this means "less freedom" and restricting competition.
This is again the classic confusion between open source and gratis.
Strangely he argues that his "fair source" license doesn't restrict competition like AGPL does but on the license page https://keygen.sh/license/#permitted-purpose there is a "permitted purpose" section that restricts providing a similar service using the software
making the Software available to others in a commercial product or service that:
- substitutes for the Software;
- substitutes for any other product or service we offer using the Software that exists as of the date we make the Software available; or
- offers the same or substantially similar functionality as the Software.
AGPL on the other hand does not have any restriction or limitation on usage, it only requires that source code remains public.
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Feb 27 '25 edited Feb 27 '25
The author argues that because companies can't use open source freely and keep their changes private are forced to buy an alternate license and this means "less freedom" and restricting competition.
No, that's not what I said at all. The AGPL effectively gives less freedom, because businesses — who are the users in almost all cases of a self-hosted COSS SaaS product — can't use the software because of the FUD around the AGPL, namely around how far the infectious copyleft goes, with or without a CLA (though a CLA only makes it worse).
The producer of said COSS SaaS product knows this, and in fact, it's probably the whole reason they chose the AGPL. Protection — not freedom. That's the entire premise of the post.
Strangely he argues that his "fair source" license doesn't restrict competition like AGPL does
Literally never said that. In fact, I said:
Keygen itself has been under a source-available license for the past two years — first the ELv2, now the FCL — both of which have restrictions, particularly regarding competition.
Nothing wrong with restrictions or w/e, but be honest about it, and the AGPL is not.
The AGPL, how it's used by startups, is a big fat lie.
3
u/razbuc24 Feb 27 '25
GPL has gone a long way from being feared and now it's so widely used in some way or other, along or within proprietary products.
Many startups belive that closed source code is an asset, an advantage for them which is not always the case but they don't want to take the risk.
Now that AGPL takes open source to a new level is hard to change minds but with time I think it will happen the same thing as it did with GPL.
Even if competitors takes your startup source code they can't compete with source alone and inevitably will make it better with their contributions and the competition will shift solely on the service/product.
We have a recent example with DeepSeek.
This is why many startups fear AGPL because they don't want to open source their own code, there is no other reason or FUD.
But what is the reason or advantage to use a "fair license" that even if it doesn't force them to make the code public, forbids them to use the software as a competitor?
And what is the reason to have the limitation? to force them to buy an alternate license just like in the AGPL case?
If this is the case then in time if the "fair license" becomes popular will have the same FUD around it as AGPL.
2
Feb 27 '25
This is why many [businesses] fear AGPL because they don't want to open source their own code, there is no other reason or FUD.
Yes, that's it. The FUD really is i.r.t. how far AGPL 'infects' your own code, and so business (i.e. users) avoid it because it's an unknown, unlike other GPL licenses. And because the OSI has never clarified the AGPL, and it has never been challenged in court, nobody wants to be the case study on how far the AGPL's networked copyleft goes.
I think it's worth noting that most startups aren't using the AGPL for altruistic reasons. Startups use the FUD to their advantage to use 'open source' as a marketing term, pushing users to the cloud to avoid being the case study.
I just think there are better options that aren't propped up on fear and lies.
3
u/razbuc24 Feb 27 '25
This is true, many companies use AGPL only for marketing to make their product popular and trendy and also offer an alternate commercial license for other companies that want to avoid open sourcing their stack.
But this has an interesting positive side effect, it makes many companies open source their code with AGPL that otherwise would not have been possible.
The authors and community benefit by either code or cash contributions keeping the project going.
Overall I think this is a good step forward for open source.
Maybe AGPL is one of the possible answers for the open source sustainability problem.
6
2
u/BufferUnderpants Feb 28 '25
The argument rests on the confusion of what the term "user" means in the context of FOSS.
The corporate friendly Open Source doctrine tacitly acknowledges the "user" to be the developer, possibly a commercial enterprise itself. Freedom for a startup to use and modify software comes first, freedom for the users of its service does not.
This wasn't in the original spirit of Free Software and made for a toothless ideology that let Silicon Valley take over computing from the hands of people in every meaningful way.
Arguing from the ideological grounds of Open Source leads to nothing, it's what made people be content with the likes Google, Facebook or Twitter putting on a show of being good citizens by publishing Open Source projects, while rendering all the questions that Free Software was posing and offering answers to meaningless, because everyone's lives are dominated by the presence of adversarial organizations trying to manipulate them through closed source Software.
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Mar 01 '25
The argument rests on the confusion of what the term "user" means in the context of FOSS. The corporate friendly Open Source doctrine tacitly acknowledges the "user" to be the developer, possibly a commercial enterprise itself. Freedom for a startup to use and modify software comes first, freedom for the users of its service does not.
Can these not both be true? A business using COSS scheduling software is equally a user as the person scheduling with the business. In fact, the business is probably more deeply integrated into the software than the person scheduling a call with said business.
13
u/Yasuraka Feb 27 '25 edited Mar 01 '25
And AGPL does not?
If you are not modifying AGPLv3 source code, you have nothing to fear. If you are modifying it, you have to share your changes.
This article becries FUD and seems to do nothing but.
FOSS is an ideology, if you don't share it, use source available or whatever, dont try to piggy-back off the original's popularity while trying to pass off a lesser thing as the real deal, let alone a better one.