Dual license? No! Everyone enjoys the freedoms of the AGPLv3 (or later). Customers can do whatever they want with the program -- that's a selling point!! Customers can use the software for whatever purpose they want. Most of them are everyday people who enjoy not having any bullshit mixed in, like product keys, seat counts, or other anti-competitive measures commonly employed by proprietary software companies.
It's a very simple business model: people pay me money, and in return they get a copy of the software and the complete corresponding source code, and all future updates to the software for 365 days.
Good software, when licensed freely, is more competitively advantageous than an equal proprietary counterpart because it does more for the customer.
That's not really true. Users need to share their modifications ONLY IF they distribute copies of the modified work, and ONLY TO those whom they distributed modified works to.
And this is the whole point: that everyone shares in the wealth of free software. And if someone makes a program better, those modifications can be reincorporated into the original work, making it more valuable.
Free software is about computer USER freedom, not DEVELOPER freedom. As a user of software, I want that freedom, and won't settle for anything less. That's why I write free software, because it's the software I want to use.
The AGPL also requires distribution of the modified work if used over a network, even if copies are not distributed. This is the entire reason AGPL was created, because GPL did not do this.
> Free software is about computer USER freedom, not DEVELOPER freedom.
What are non-developers going to do with source code? Back when FOSS was first conceptualized, all users were developers.
Regardless of anyone's opinions on the issue, the fact of the matter is that AGPL quite specifically don't let people do "anything" with it. The software comes with obligations. That is the entire point of copyleft. Sure, you might think the obligations are good -- that doesn't mean they don't exist.
> What are non-developers going to do with source code?
What do you do when your car is missing a feature that you want? You bring it to a mechanic, and you pay them to add the functionality you want. The GPL means freedom.
And telling someone they need to respect the freedoms that you grant them is not restricting their freedom. It costs nothing to share your source code, and it should be the default state of software development. It's like the silliness around the tolerance paradox. An action that creates more freedom in the world can never be seen as "less free" than one that doesn't.
> And telling someone they need to respect the freedoms that you grant them is not restricting their freedom. It costs nothing to share your source code, and it should be the default state of software development.
I agree with this. However, I don't personally believe AGPL does this as equitably as some other licenses.
> That's not really true. Users need to share their modifications ONLY IF they distribute copies of the modified work, and ONLY TO those whom they distributed modified works to.
Except for AGPL, which can require sharing your modifications even if you are not distributing copies of the modified work. Indeed, that was the whole point of AGPL.
If you consider having to propagate the same rights you were given as a limitation, you cannot also claim that MIT/BSD licenses allow users to do whatever they want.
MIT and BSD have requirements you must fulfil too. You can't just "do whatever you want" with them.
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I don't normally reach for this level of pedantry, but some takes in this thread just boggle my mind.
That's fair. I was thinking more in terms of applicable use cases, rather than limitations on liablity/warranty/sublicensing.
Although on that note, I find it somewhat funny to speak about something like the MIT license as conveying "rights", when half of the license's purpose is to take away the licensee's legal rights.
MIT/BSD licences do not take away any rights from the licensee. They merely avoid giving licensees certain rights that would otherwise be understood to be automatic or implicitly granted alongwith the copyright licence.
Like when Anakin was reminded by Mace Windu that his seat on the Jedi Council does not grant him the rank of Master.
Glass-half-full or glass-half-empty, the fact of the matter is that they intentionally disclaim legal rights which would otherwise have automatically been available to the user in many jurisdictions.
It's crazy to me how it is completely normal for engineers in other fields to be held liable for shoddy work, but many software engineers think they're upholding users' rights by giving them software that prohibits users from holding them responsible for their work.
These limitations exist solely out of convenience for the author.
May I ask how you go about it? Dual license?