FSF Releases AGPL License For Web Services

mako writes "The Free Software Foundation has released the Affero General Public license version 3. The license is essentially the GPLv3 with an added clause that requires that source code be distributed to users that interact with the application over a network. The license effectively extends copyright to Web applications. The new AGPL will have important effects for companies that, under the GPL, have no obligation to distribute changes to users on the Web. This release adds the license to the stable of official FSF licenses and is compatible with the GPLv3."

Comments

"The license extends copyright to Web apps"

[jkrise]

Can someone explain exactly how a license can extend Copyright?

The owner of the copyright might extend terms in his license, not the other way round.

Might be usefull for companies too...

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

This might be useful for companies too. We have in example been thinking about releasing our software in open source to expand the usage of our software and to gain more knowledge in the markets about us. However as we are business and a rather small one, releasing the software in example in GPL would be more or less commercial suicide, as our software is purely web based, some bigger service company could just take it and give nothing back...

I really have to read more about AGPL. I think that by combining AGPL + MPL + strong attribution clauses, for us and maybe to many more small developers it could come more lucrative to open source our software, because we still would get changes back, we would have more freedom and we would get attribution for our work. Definitely very good for FSF to publish this license. I really think that in time as there comes more licenses that cover different things, it will come more and more easier and secure to publish software and other works in open source.