Now we're cookin' with gas! Sorry I can no longer edit my original comment, but hopefully it and your reply help orient some others. Nice work on this, thanks!
I saw that it was AGPL licensed, which was odd to me for something that's supposed to be a client. I don't like the AGPL license because of how overbearing it is, I avoid downloading AGPL'd software, unless its a pure compiled binary. I am probably a little too strict about software licenses, but I rather always have the freedom to keep any forks to myself, don't force me to share code for my one-off project.
AGPL does not prevent anything that anyone has any right to want. The more someone cries that agpl (or gpl3, or gpl-any) is "overbearing", the more they expose how they wish they could steal. You can't say one without saying the other, they are the same statement. And it's an extra level of amazing to need to steal something that's already free.
You can absolutely not only use agpl software, for free, you can even sell access to it. SO OVERBEARING
If you can't stand the burden of having to share with the next guy that which you yourself were given for free, there is no reason for anyone else to feel the tiniest bit of sympathy.
Feel free to write your own software and set whatever terms you like. Surely the need to write it and develop it to the point of actually being any good is not overbearing at all.
Or feel free to license software from someone selling it. Surely Oracle or IBM terms will not be overbearing at all.
I mean I just avoid the software altogether, and yes I would rather pay for proprietary software than use a license that could somehow wind me up in any sort of lawsuit should I ever make similar software. No thanks.
People say that but I remember when Mongo changed their license to some custom one that was similarish to AGPL and it didnt even matter because China just does not care.
I worked for a small software shop for about 20 years and then the owner sold us to a big multinational company. People from the new company were telling us that they had just recently come through a big MS audit and were pleased with themselves that they had come through ok.
I was boggled that they were pleased to have been audited and blessed by fucking Microsoft.
Talk about "wind up in a lawsuit..." I am just trying to imagine freaking auditors from Gimp or Apache showing up and demanding to rifle through all your computers to make sure you aren't violating Gimp's GPL license.
But GPL or AGPL is overbearing.
People have somehow just lost any sense of rational perspective about just what is reasonable and unreasonable.
This is an incorrect interpretation of the AGPL. You do have the freedom to keep forks to yourself. You're only required to present source code to people who can use your program (directly or via the network).
Um, no. That isn't sharing it. That isn't even having users run it. It's just letting others use it via the network.
It's Freedom Zero because you certainly have the freedom to use it, along with a lot of other freedoms. But you have to adopt the license for the code it touches if you involve others in your Freedom Zero use of it.
I think 99% of usage of the acronym FUD is dumb, so I don't use this lightly, but this is some pretty seriously bad FUD.
If you connect to your database using an AGPL licensed db client, you don't have to change all your codebases to AGPL. Unless your code is a modification to the tool, and you are going to distribute it to others, it imposes no obligations whatsoever. It wouldn't even make logical sense. If you write a new browser or even a curl replacement and license it AGPL, and use it to curl Google, would G have to AGPL their entire giant monorepo?
Both my comment (code it touches) and the comment I replied to (sharing the fork) were about this case. Nowhere did I say there was any reason to worry about it if it wasn’t the case, or that it was the most common case. I imagined integrating a browser based SQL client into an enterprise app where you want to give users database access as a scenario where that part of the license might apply.
Yes, it prevents the AWS case where you take a GPL product, put it behind an API gateway, and suddenly you’re under no obligation to share your changes even though they’re still sharing the product. This product in particular would excel as SaaS, and Outerbase already sells one of those — they’re not going to give you their product, white-label! You’d have to also share your mods, or link to the original.
You can still do the above, and even charge for it! You’re just in the “hosted software” business, not the embrace-extend-extinguish business.
Thank you for explaining this so clearly. We were very cautious in choosing the license for this exact reason!
We love open-source and want to give back fully to the community. The AGPL felt like the most open license that still protects against outright theft — something we’ve unfortunately experienced in the past.
You have done very well, thank you! I completely agree.
AGPL is perfect for this IMHO. The fact that so many people seem to think that even looking at the github page for an AGPL product will mean everything on Earth suddenly has to be AGPLed is their problem, not yours.
