Brian, Not really... "IANAL" but the AGPL is virtually identical to the GPL except that it eliminates the "ASP loophole". Let's pretend FreeSWITCH was licensed under the GPL. Let's say I make my own modifications to FreeSWITCH and provide network services to my customers. Under the GPL I am NOT required to provide these source changes to anyone because I'm not distributing a binary - I'm providing network services to customers. The binary runs in my datacenter (or wherever); it's not being "distributed". If you're providing "network services" to customers and not distributing software using a GPL license it may as well be BSD or something else with a weak copyleft. Under the AGPL providing network services to customers is essentially equal to distributing binaries under the GPL. In my hypothetical situation above if FreeSWITCH were licensed under the AGPL I would be required to distribute my source changes to my customers even though I never provided them with a binary. Of course (under both licenses) once I distribute the binary and source to my customers I might as well distribute it to the rest of the world because are free to do so anyway... On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Brian West <brian@freeswitch.org> wrote:
AGPL is the most evil license you can ever pick for anything... its the one that reaches over the socket and steals your code and soul.
/b
-- Kristian Kielhofner http://www.astlinux.org http://blog.krisk.org http://www.star2star.com http://www.submityoursip.com http://www.voalte.com