The document server is Apache, but the editors and visual components are AGPL.

That’s so sad. I’d hate to work at a shop that wouldn’t allow AGPL’d software for internal tooling. What a completely legally unnecessary, productivity-hobbling decision.

Perhaps the best feature of the AGPL is that it predominately hampers companies with ineffective legal departments.

Licenses intended to be viral and poisonous are avoided by companies interested in ownership over their own IP. Huge shocker.

What do you mean by "poisonous"?

It's just a classic F.U.D (fear, uncertainty and doubt) tactic

They are intentionally dangerous to unwitting license holders who wield them wrong.

I suppose it's about the patent clause.

> viral and poisonous

Viral, perhaps if you integrate a library, but in this case it doesn't make sense, you only need to distribute source code if you modify it. Poisonous makes no sense to me, can you clarify?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poisonous

1. DESTRUCTIVE, HARMFUL

...

3. SPITEFUL, MALICIOUS

In what ways is the GPL or AGPL destructive or harmful or spiteful or malicious? I find it the exact opposite of all those concepts.

It’s not, except to people who want to use GPLed software without holding up their end of the bargain.

Can they hurt you if you accidentally use them without understanding the consequences?

Hmm, it sounds to me like so much of our world is poison, then. Most surveillance-capitalism software (so the bulk of the most popular websites) are for example poisonous then, no? Unless you'd like to argue that unintentionally turning yourself into a research subject isn't really harmful, in which case I argue accidentally using a license that requires you to share any licensed code you change to also not really be harmful.

You can do whatever you want with your code, you just really shouldn't act surprised when people avoid it so it can't hurt them. They don't see the tradeoff as being worth it. Maybe they don't in the other cases you are presenting as "poisonous" but in those situations they either aren't aware that it's posoin or they are aware and think that it's worth the tradeoff. Regardless, businesses have pretty much universally decided to avoid. I think that speaks volumes.

> Regardless, businesses have pretty much universally decided to avoid. I think that speaks volumes.

I don't typically make my decisions based on what businesses "universally decide" (have they actually?). Most businesses are shareholder or private corporations that find margin between labor and sales; I instead structured a business as a co-op and that seems to be working just fine. Many businesses profit off polluting the environment or selling weapons; I've never worked DoD or O&G (and never will) and lead an extraordinarily comfortable and privileged life regardless. Many content creator businesses lock their content behind paywalls, riddle their sites with ads and tracking; I put up a simple blog in html and css and my audience might be small but they are engaged and are in conversation with me.

I'm not trying to say i'm a special ethical snowflake that's better than everyone else, I'm saying I don't really take it as a given that "businesses doing things in a certain" way really means much of anything at all. In fact I've found often profit correlates with harm (and that businesses often make decisions that don't lead to long, long-term profits but rather pillage themselves for short-term profits), O&G being a great example, so I might even be able to take "businesses do it that way" as a warning to not do it that way or I might be hurting people.

I think you're taking my criticism of the license as an indictment of your personal licensing decisions. I don't really have a problem with you licensing your software the way you choose to. You mainly seem to take issue with the word "poison", that's how I see these licenses, but it was never intended to be about the morality of using them. I'm also not talking about whether businesses are being moral in their other practices unrelated to licensing, I am just saying it's NOT shocking or surprising that they avoid potentially harmful (to them) licenses even if they could maybe save money by doing so. Even if you think that they AREN'T harmful (to the businesses) that's clearly not the perception they have, otherwise companies are leaving free money on the table which I doubt most informed companies are willing to do.

I don't care to continue the conversation where you justify your actions to me, it's just not necessary. I just wish we would stop acting like it's confusing or we don't understand why businesses respond the way that they do when confronted with the decision to use AGPL software.

Maybe it's just a messaging/marketing problem, I don't know.

If you don't distribute the program you don't need to care that it's built with GPL dependencies.

The entire point of the AGPL is to close this 'hole.' The AGPL is not the GPL.

Ah I missed it was AGPL

One of the most notable examples is Google.

Pity. They said it’s because they’re afraid someone outside Google would use it, which is legitimate for companies without sufficient technical SBOL controls to prevent using third party software in violation of its terms. Their take is basically “we don’t have a way to keep our internal software internal, so you can’t use it at all, ever, for anything”. I wouldn’t have expected that of them.

That makes sense. GPL 3 is basically a non-starter for people that ship hardware, but is fine for people that provide web services.

AGPL would level the playing field between Google and device manufacturers and on-prem software companies (like Apple and Microsoft).

Of course they don’t want their employees to use and indirectly support that ecosystem!

I wish they’d produce a GPL 4 that is closer to the AGPL. v3 backfired and is severely hurting end-users’ freedom in practice.

I know, but why?

Due to their size, they must have one of the best legal department in the world. Also, their core business is search, and data processing in general. They have the means of using such software and doing what it takes to comply with the licence without putting themselves in trouble.

My guess is simply that they don't want to. They prefer to rewrite it, which will allow them to monetize their tools as proprietary software later. They are already overstaffed with some of the best developers, they can rewrite stuff, and they don't really need help from the open source community, that's why they don't release under copyleft themselves.

Totally bollocks.

This is pure fud. Nothing else.

AGPL DOES NOT restrict ability to be used internally. Agpl does NOT restrict selling software as it is.

Agpl does not restrict using agpl software with proprietary software.

Only thing that agpl prevent is, IF YOU MODIFY AGPL SOFTWARE, YOU HAVE TO GIVE SOURCE CODE TO USERS. Your modifications. Thats it.

AGPL DOES NOT MANDATE upstreaming modifications. You can do it or you cannot. Your choice. Others can choose to upstream or fork or Downstream your modifications

What you are confusing with is the fud google spreads about agpl. They dont touch it because if they modify code they have to release it but they don't for reasons known to them.

Again, AGPL is NOT viral like SSPL which is like AGPL but on steroids.

And the weirdest part about the complaint is that this is an application your employees could run on their computers to write documents. It's not like the discussion is about a library or package to be included in the product you're shipping.

Yeah. I challenge people here to break my claims down point by point from agpl license.

I could be wrong but let's see how wrong I really am.

With large companies with 100s of partners and contractors what is internal is fluid particularly over the network. So am sure they don't want to use such as a library.

Though I am not lawyer/license expert so that fact may be irrelevant more so using it as desktop app. But perception matters, if Goog/MSFT are not using it, a startup also won't risk using them lest some auditor flags it in next round of funding particularly if alternative is few dollars a month.

The software in question is an end product, like microsoft office.

>lest some auditor flags it in next round of funding

i am an auditor and a laywer, so what is there to flag? please enlighten me.

This is the AGPL, not the GPL. The AGPL may be based on the GPL but it is different, and has nothing to do with the Free Software Foundation.

Basically, you if you provide this software as a service to your customers, you are required to let them access the source code and modifications.

The AGPLv3, which OnlyOffice uses, is a FSF license.

>Basically, you if you provide this software as a service to your customers, you are required to let them access the source code and modifications.

the source code of "this" software and any modifications you made. so.... whats the problem?

Be is it may, there are companies like iText (Java PDF library) which are actively harassing companies which use their software, even if the use is perfectly legal (e.g. internal server software). So it's not only Google spreading FUD but companies which try to use AGPL as a trojan horse and then strong-arm users into commercial licenses.

The problem with AGPL is, that the definitions are very open to interpretation. What is a network, how many systems do have to be between to the end user and the software component to still count as "interacting over a network", etc.

So I would also not recommend to use AGPL in your company...

Please make your substantive points without fulminating or calling names. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. In addition, it's in your own interest because it will make your argument much more persuasive.

Edit: we've had to ask you this at least once before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32387908. Can you please stick to the rules when posting here? We have to ban accounts that won't, and I don't want to ban you.

> The AGPL is regarded as so toxic that nearly all companies where office suites matter, place it on a "do not use" list. It's a good way to artificially limit your potential customers.

Then it's no worse than any proprietary software; if they pay for a commercial license then it's fine. Of course, if they use it internally then AGPL is also fine.

I think that’s why they have a commercial offering

You sound like a puppet of a big corporation. Surprisingly, your account was created 11 hours ago. AGPL does not prevent anyone from using or modifying the source, you just have to make the sources available only if you distribute the modified software. Corporate interests at play here I guess.