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Cake day: May 31st, 2020

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  • AGPL is specifically for web services. For example, if Nextcloud were provided under the GPL, Amazon or the like could serve a modified version of Nextcloud without having to hand out their modifications. As far as the GPL is concerned, Amazon is the user and the software just happens to accept requests from the network.
    With AGPL, those who use the software over the network are also deemed users and therefore have the right to access the source code.



  • I imagine, it’s just too much of a niche and practically not enforceable anyways.

    You would need to somehow know that a web service is a using a modified version of your library, then you’d be able to demand those library changes to be open-sourced.

    And well, just in general, covering all kinds of niche use-cases isn’t terribly healthy for open-source licenses, because each modification is something that can be challenged in court and which might be incompatible with other licenses.
    Ultimately, a library under such a specialty license would probably not see much use either. You could only really depend on it in AGPL applications. And at some point, you do have to ask yourself, if it’s even useful to develop your library then.