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0 pointsaidangrimshaw3y ago0 comments

The project has an AGPL license if that's what you're wondering. We figured many people would feel the same way

0 comments

AGPL just means that users can fork the project if they have access to older AGPL code, but CLAs that assign copyright mean that the rights holders can change the license whenever they want and make it difficult to find old AGPL code by removing repositories and scrubbing the web of it.

It's entirely possible for the rights holders to say "we're going private now" and pivot the project into a for-profit business.

aidangrimshawOP3y ago

Do know of a better license alternative that prevents that from happening? Would be interested!

cure3y ago

Your license choice is perfectly fine. If you do not have CLA, you have an AGPL codebase with many people owning the copyright on portions of it.

In terms of future proofing against the project "going commercial" (i.e. changing the license going forward), it doesn't get much better than this, because pretty much all the copyright holders would need to agree on a license change.

Ideally, the bulk of the copyright does not reside with a small number of authors - the more authors, and the more evenly the copyright is spread among them, the better.

lakecresva3y ago

You don't need a CLA. Github's ToS are set up such that contributions you get from other github users are licensed in the same manner as your repo unless the contributor gets you to agree to accept them under some other license : https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t.... People should not be worried about you "going private"; if you've accepted non de minimis contributions from other users, any future conveyance or network interaction stuff would require you to include the source materials to stay in compliance.

marcianx3y ago

You don't need another license. You just need to either (1) not require a CLA, or (2) if you do, write the CLA so that it prevents you from doing that with others' contributions.

chungy3y ago

There isn't one, because copyright holders have all the legal right to do whatever they want. The legal owner of a copyrighted work is not beholden to the license they release the work under.

remexre3y ago

Note that AGPL and _not_ having a CLA means that this _isn't_ the case, because... you don't have a CLA.

candiddevmike3y ago

This is an interesting situation for FOSS licenses. AGPL doesn't necessarily prohibit commercial behavior. I think if all the maintainers truly wanted to prevent anyone from commercializing it, you'd go with a source available license like BSL or creative commons.

It's interesting because having a group of disparate humans come together and say "yea, we hate the current thing, let's build something better and not commercialize it" doesn't typically happen. Kudos to you folks!

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