Affero General Public License V3 Released -- Visual Studio Magazine

Affero General Public License V3 Released

By Will Kraft
11/28/2007

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) recently published GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3), a derivative of GPL version 3. Unlike the standard GPL, Affero has an additional clause that allows users who interact with AGPLv3-licensed software over a network to receive the source code for that program.

AGPLv3 is meant to address a flaw in the original GPL that may result in the source code of a modified GPL program never being made generally available if it is only meant to be used over a network instead of being run locally on users' machines.

For instance, a programmer might modify a GPL program and deploy the modified version on a server. Since use of the server does not guarantee access to the source code (unless the programmer takes steps to make it available), the modified source code may never be released. For this reason, the FSF recommends that developers of network-oriented projects use AGPLv3 instead of the standard GPLv3.

Code from the GPL may be mixed with AGPL code. In addition, the AGPL doesn't specifically require network usage, so AGPL code may be used in standard GPLv3 projects as well. This flexibility gives programmers access to a much larger code base for use in projects without having to rebuild everything from scratch.

The new license arose in response to community demands, according to FSF Board Member Benjamin Mako Hill.

"The feedback we received while working on the original GPLv3 demonstrated a clear desire for this sort of license....We're happy that the GNU AGPL meets those needs," he stated in an FSF announcement.

The FSF has been a proponent of software licensing freedom, as demonstrated with the creation of GPLv3, which includes language concerning open source and proprietary source cross-licensing agreements. Many corporations have been happy to utilize GPLv2 software in their products, but GPLv3 has been given a wide berth. GPLv3 specifically addressed events such as the Microsoft-Novell patent licensing deal of 2006, as well as "tivoization."

Tivoization is a situation where GPL-licensed software is used to create a product, but the hardware is used to stave off derivatives of the software. The word "tivoization" was coined for Tivo, the manufacturer of a popular digital video recorder system that utilizes the Linux kernel and other GNU software.

Tivo had released its digital video recorder software's source code in compliance with the GPLv2. However, the Tivo hardware would not run any user-modified versions of the Tivo source code. The GPLv3 was specifically drafted to keep similar events from happening again. In this way, the AGPL is another method of keeping open source software open by protecting the user's freedom to examine the source code of network-deployed software.

About the Author

Will Kraft is a Web designer, technical consultant and freelance writer. He can be reached at [email protected]. Also, check out his blog at http://www.willkraftblog.com.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Hands On: New VS Code Insiders Build Creates Web Page from Image in Seconds

New Vision support with GitHub Copilot in the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders build takes a user-supplied mockup image and creates a web page from it in seconds, handling all the HTML and CSS.
Naive Bayes Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the naive Bayes regression technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. Compared to other machine learning regression techniques, naive Bayes regression is usually less accurate, but is simple, easy to implement and customize, works on both large and small datasets, is highly interpretable, and doesn't require tuning any hyperparameters.
VS Code Copilot Previews New GPT-4o AI Code Completion Model

The 4o upgrade includes additional training on more than 275,000 high-quality public repositories in over 30 popular programming languages, said Microsoft-owned GitHub, which created the original "AI pair programmer" years ago.
Microsoft's Rust Embrace Continues with Azure SDK Beta

"Rust's strong type system and ownership model help prevent common programming errors such as null pointer dereferencing and buffer overflows, leading to more secure and stable code."
Xcode IDE from Microsoft Archrival Apple Gets Copilot AI

Just after expanding the reach of its Copilot AI coding assistant to the open-source Eclipse IDE, Microsoft showcased how it's going even further, providing details about a preview version for the Xcode IDE from archrival Apple.