On The Risks of Permissive Licensing

Also, the AGPL isn’t something that commercial operations are afraid of. There are plenty of examples of industry using AGPL software.

The problem (problems, in reality, are actually just opportunities for solutions) is that scheming “software and appliance” companies wish to close source their products (whether they created them or not) under their proprietary brands. They can, and have, launched litigation against those infringing upon or co-opting their trade and service marks, even patents based on their own products - that sometimes was developed and sold without a single scrap of code authored by them. The only thing a permissive license requires is a Copyright notice, somewhere obscure.

“Ohh yeah, we did include a bit of some open source code” is all they gotta admit to when pressed - they never can be forced to divulge that they didn’t write diddly squat!

Maybe… Just maybe… It’s… Your code.

With respect to the patent, all they need to do is change one little thing about the process in which the existing software worked and patent that. Whole 'nother thing though and I’m not here to teach how to engage in patent trolling, like we did at IBM, lolz.

When they do add to that code, their code is under a completely arbitrarily determined proprietary license, locking down the entire product (written by someone else), as closed source under the terms of a license they decide upon - nothing at all remains of the permissively licensed product… Except that obscure little Copyright notice somewhere.

AGPL merely enforces that anything you add to an initially AGPL licensed work must be made available on demand by the people using your product…