Google Advises Against AGPL Fools
The tech giant prefers developers to avoid participating in this event.
Developers in the Open Source Software (OSS) community are changing the license of their software to the AGPLv3 license in celebration of April Fools’. Tech giants such as Google are advising against this behavior.
Here is what you need to know.
What Is The AGPL License?
The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) is a strong copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation. This license permits developers to use a given software upon the condition that its source code is always distributed to the end user. It also requires developers to leave the license intact upon redistribution of the software.
The AGPL license was created to patch the Application Service Provider loophole in the GNU General Public License (GPL). This GPL license loophole unintentionally lets Software as a Service (SaaS) companies — who provide applications as a service — run GPL-licensed software over the network without adhering to the GPL license terms.
The AGPL license is identical to the original GPL license except for the Application Service Provider loophole patch: This requires people who link (i.e import, copy, etc) the software from…
