fyi: GNU coreutils are licensed GPL, not AGPL.
there is so much other confusion in this thread, i can't even 🤦
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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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.
In my Company, we do use such code. But its mainly because we distribute our own Propriatary Linux OS.
We sometimes need to change such code, so we just put it on Github as a fork.
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.
Had bronchitis as a child nearly every few weeks for years. All gone but sucks to have it.
Get well soon.
I still feel like, the point where you say more people can use it and will use it, can create a dark pattern.
Imagine you create something and make people depending on it. Another cooperation copies it and advances it with a lot of money. Somehow, the ecosystem is so changed, that when you depend on that project, you need to use the newer version of the cooperation and soon they will paywall it heavily.
Then, your wish for people using the code as much as possible got nuked.
I assume that many scenarios will allow the usage of your old MIT project without relying on the new version of someone. But rare cases exist, where this happens. Its like predicting the 30th step in chess or smth. (Idk chess that well)
Its... unlikely that it will happen, but yeah. I can understand your perspective, but slowly going to AGPL sounds right.
Its simple: its to exploit it in a corporate setting. I license under MIT because a lot of my things are of small convenience, but never without debating the ethics of why I am licensing it.
GNU is the enemy to capitalism and if you need more proof, look at what Apple has done with LLVM/Clang and CUPS. We need GNU more than ever.
I understand that if your boss tells you to write MIT/Proprietary code, you do so. I just wish that the ones who had a choice would use GPL
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Or on the flip side, they want usage to be pervasive so they win. I mean come on man it's like "move this file" and "make this directory".
these applications aren't rocket science and providing them under a license that people will use outside of the hardcore Linux space is just good marketing.
If you're developing software for a platform that doesn't allow users to replace dynamic libraries (game consoles, iOS, many embedded/commercial systems), you won't be able to legally use any GPL or AGPL libraries.
While I strongly agree with the motives behind copyleft licenses, I personally never use them because I've had many occasions where I was unable to use any available library for a specific task because they all had incompatible licenses.
I release code for the sole purpose of allowing others to use it. I don't want to impose any restrictions on my fellow developers, because I understand the struggle it can bring.
Even for desktop programs, I prefer MIT or BSD because it allows others to take snippets of code without needing to re-license anything.
Yes I understand that means anyone can make a closed-source fork, but that doesn't bother me.
If I wanted to sell it I might care, but I would have used a different license for a commercial project anyway.
Sorry, I'm not much of a software dev so bear with me:
If the libraries are GPL licensed, is there a problem? Unless you're editing the libraries themselves.
Now if the application is GPL licensed and you're adding functionality to use other libraries, please push upstream. It helps the community and the author will more likely than not be happy to receive it
Any linking against GPL software requires you to also release your source code under GPL. ~~A~~LGPL allows you to link to it dynamically without relicensing, but as explained, there are platforms where dynamic linking isn't an option, which means these libraries can't be used if one doesn't want to provide ~~A~~LGPL licensed source code of their own product.
You mean LGPL when you say AGPL, right?
Yes, sorry
Using a GPL library will require you to re-license your entire project as GPL, regardless of whether you made a change or not.
LGPL is a bit better, because it allows you to dynamically link the library. But you're required to provide a copy of source for the library, and any users must be able to swap the built library with their own copy.
Eg; you can use an AGPL-licensed .dll in your closed-source windows program, because users can swap that .dll easily.
You can't do the same for a ps5 game because users aren't able to replace any files that the game uses.
If the only problem is that you can't use dynamic linking (or otherwise make relinking possible), you still can legally use LGPL libraries. As long as you license the project using that library as GPL or LGPL as well.
However, those platforms tend to be a problem for GPL in other ways. GPL has long been known to conflict with Apple's App Store and similar services, for example, because the GPL forbids imposing extra limits that restrict user freedom and those stores have a terms of service that does exactly that.
I guess I forgot to mention that those platforms usually require you to sign NDA's that prevent you from releasing any code that references their SDK.
This makes it impossible to license your entire project as GPL/AGPL, as you would be breaking the NDA.
Bruh instead of all this speculation, you guys could have just looked it up.
https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/discussions/4358#discussioncomment-8027681
There is a big difference between what someone says they are doing vs why they are actually doing it
Canonical still licenses most of their stuff under GPL3, including new stuff. The license (other than it being open) was probably not even a consideration in deciding to experiment with uutils.
Does anyone use MPL anymore? Is it a decent middle ground or the worst of both worlds?
For what use case?
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