But this entire comment thread on the AGPL misses the mark. It doesn't matter that the AGPL hasn't been tested in court or what fine grained distinctions you apply to the license or what the AGPL intends. No company in their right mind would risk using software licensed under the AGPL because the result of being wrong would be catastrophic. The legal advice to be skeptical of the AGPL is absolutely right. There is no conceivable reason to ever use AGPL software when you could simply license it under a commerical license or use a non-AGPL alternative.
Generally when someone licenses something under the AGPL they totally understand this and that is their intention.
> The legal advice to be skeptical of the AGPL is absolutely right.
The legal risk involved by using AGPL software for a company is exactly zero.
AGPL is an open source license which, by the very definition of open source, means that you can freely use the software. Full stop.
The only arguable risk is when modifying the software and on top of that using it in conjunction with other in-house software. But if you are ready to use a proprietary license, you already refrained from modifying the software.
So just use it and end of story. AGPL is a perfectly fine, open source license.
Or, you could use AGPL software and license it under AGPL as well. Considering most money today is made in the hosting and servicing and not selling license, I don't see why you would bother caring about old fashioned ways.
You're right, Google is a sane and healthy model of business to follow and surveillance capitalism, based explicitly on capturing data on users and selling it to third-parties for ads is something that benefits society as a whole. There are absolutely no models other than the one Google is running.
But this entire comment thread on the AGPL misses the mark. It doesn't matter that the AGPL hasn't been tested in court or what fine grained distinctions you apply to the license or what the AGPL intends. No company in their right mind would risk using software licensed under the AGPL because the result of being wrong would be catastrophic. The legal advice to be skeptical of the AGPL is absolutely right. There is no conceivable reason to ever use AGPL software when you could simply license it under a commerical license or use a non-AGPL alternative.
Generally when someone licenses something under the AGPL they totally understand this and that is their intention.