Opensource @programming.dev godiganbabay @ponder.cat 2d ago

FYI: An appeals court may kill a GNU GPL software license

go.theregister.com Adverse appeals court ruling could kill GPL software license

Defense of FOSS licensing rests on the shoulders of a guy in Virginia

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/120321

3 comments

I am really confused by what is going on here. Was Neo4j the original author of the code? Because if so, then they can license their own code however they like. The potential sticking point would be if they represented the license as being AGPL3 when it is not because this would be fundamentally misleading, and it sounds like the court agrees that this is a valid concern because it awarded a partial summary judgement that, "The court did affirm that a license created by combining the AGPL with other non-open-source terms cannot be called 'free and open source.'"

It is noteworthy that apparently the Free Software Foundation did not think that this legal case was worth intervening in.
- The FSF doesn't seem to have teeth when it comes to things like this, instead it's the SFC who intervenes.
  
  In January, the Software Freedom Conservancy, an open source advocacy group that intervened to help Suhy several years ago, submitted an amicus brief to the Ninth Circuit
Neo4j provided database software under the AGPLv3, then tweaked the license, leading to legal battles over forks of the software. The AGPLv3 includes language that says any added restrictions or requirements are removable, meaning someone could just file off Neo4j's changes to the usage and distribution license, reverting it back to the standard AGPLv3, which the biz has argued and successfully fought against in that California district court.

The issue before the appeals court boils down to the right to remove contractual restrictions added to the terms of the APGL. This right is spelled out in AGPLv3, section 7, paragraph 4: "If the program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this license along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term." Other GPLs contain similar terms.

"Licensed under AGPL but not AGPL"? It's a named license that people have expectations on. I assume if they had said "licensed under aa modified AGPL license" it would have been fine? Seems reasonable/makes sense.

How does that become "may kill a GPL license"? Key word "a"? (When it's not one.)