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One might ask, "Why does the #AGPLv3 #FreeSoftware license exist? Who is it for?"

You can find answers in the talk that Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence of @conservancy@mastodon.technology, gave at #SCALE11x in 2013.

#FOSS #OpenSource #Copyleft #Licensing for #SaaS
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/SCALE-2013/agplv3.html

A long form summary of the talk by @n8 was published in @LWN

https://lwn.net/Articles/541981/

It's interesting to look back on this talk, given in February of 2013, that begins with the framing of the "Application Service Provider loophole":
"""
Rather, the authors of the GPLv2 did not foresee the dramatic takeoff of web applications—and that was not a failure, strictly speaking, since no one can foresee the future.
"""

Bradley went on to say,
"""
the community needs to be aware that the AGPL can be—and often is—abused. This is usually done through "up-selling" and license enforcement done with a profit motive, he said. MySQL AB (now owned by Oracle) is the most prominent example;
"""

So, Bradley *did* foresee the future of #AGPLv3 abuse. Only a few months later, Oracle changed the license of #BerkeleyDB to AGPLv3.

https://lwn.net/Articles/557820/

@msw do you know if Bradley is on here yet?

@egallager I looked around, but haven't seen a login. @karen just moved to a new instance. Maybe she can convince Bradley to set it up.

@msw @karen or better yet set it up *for* him! (you know, since Bradley is busy and all)