I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don’t see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It’s like they’re painting their faces with “here, take my stuff and don’t contribute anything back, that’s totally fine”
For me, my personal projects are generally MIT licensed. I generally don’t like “restrictions” on licenses, even if those “restrictions” are requiring others to provide their source and I want as many people to use my projects as possible, I don’t like to restrict who uses it, even if it’s just small/home businesses who don’t want to publish the updated source code. Although, I admit, I’m not a huge fan of large corporations potentially using my code to generate a profit and do evil things with it, but I also think that’s not going to be very common versus the amount of use others could get from it by having it using MIT who might not be able to use it otherwise with AGPL.
With that said, though, I have been starting to come around more to AGPL these days.
I wohld agree, because you really downplay the scenario.
As soon as you accidentallt create something, which everyone starts to use or has an use case, then some Cooperation will copy that thing, make it better and make your community dissappear because there is the newer tool which you cant change the code of anymore and need to use a monthly subscription or something to even use.
So, it somehow seems like you’re gaslighting yourself by downplaying the use case.
Mostly it will be small buisnesses and hobbyists, which I would like to code for them too. Especially when they are nice and friendly. But as soon as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon gets hands on it and sees a potential to squeeze money through it by destroying it, then they will surely do it.
This can happen.
The flip side is noone uses it. I’ve never worked at any company that allowed even lgpl code to be used. If it has a commercial license we’ll buy it, if not…find another tool.
Lawyers are terrified of gpl and will do anything to avoid going to court over it, including forcing you to rip code out and do a clean room rewrite.
I edited my comment to better and more fully reflect my thoughts. It’s hard to properly express myself when I’ve been as sick as I have been with bronchitis and possible pneumonia for the past 4 weeks.
Hopefully my comment now better reflects my thoughts.