All Canonical contributions have been relicensed and are now under AGPLv3. Community contributions remain under Apache 2.0.
So they can happily port over code from the Incus fork but Incus cannot import the code without changing the license first. It’s meant to be a one-way street. Typical Canonical.
Look, I’m usually first in line to shit on Canonical, but I can’t get mad at them adopting AGPL. This is objectively the best license for server software. Incus should also switch to AGPL for all Canonical code, and seek to have contributors license their code as AGPL as well.
I will however point out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of it, because the Snap server is still proprietary after all of this time. If this is their “standard for server-side code” then apply it to Snaps or quit lying to us.
Can you explain to a person who knows little about licenses, such as myself, what makes AGPL so good?
The full details are complex but I’ll give you the basic gist. The original GPL licenses essentially say that if you give somebody the compiled binary, they are legally entitled to have the source code as well, along with the rights to modify and redistribute it so long as they too follow the same rules. It creates a system where code flows down freely like water.
However, this doesn’t apply if you don’t give them the binary. For example, taking an open source GPL-licensed project and running it on a server instead. The GPL doesn’t apply, so you can modify it and do whatever, and you aren’t required to share the source code if other people access it because that’s not specified in the GPL.
The AGPL was created to address this. It adds a stipulation that if you give people access to the software on a remote system, they are still entitled to the source code and all the same rights to modify and redistribute it. Code now flows freely again, and all is well.
The only “issue” is that the GPL/AGPL are only one-way compatible with the Apache/MIT/BSD/etc licenses. These licenses put minimal requirements on code sharing, so it’s completely fine to add their code to GPL projects. But themselves, they aren’t up to GPL requirements, so GPL code can’t be added to Apache projects.
It requires that you make available the full source code to anyone who you give binaries too (like the GPL), but also requires you make available that source to users of the software over a network. So, someone could not make a proprietary fork of AGPL software to sell exclusively as a service. In order to provide that service you have to also be willing to provide the source, including changes, which would allow users to then choose to run that service themselves instead of being forced to pay the provider.
Obviously their own code can be sold at their discretion. It’s not about libre software.
They would have used a license like SSPL or the newer BSL for that. AGPL keeps it open. They got that going for them and about nothing else.
Apache is too permissive a license anyways. This is kind of the point of copyleft licenses — a feature, not a bug.
The CLA is still in place. Usual Canonical.
This incus? https://github.com/lxc/incus I don’t understand
Yes but I don’t know what you don’t understand. One-directional flow of FLOSS licenses?
Projects which choose BSD/Apache type licences do so fully in the knowledge that their code may be incorporated into projects with different licences. That’s literally the point: it’s considered a feature of the licence. These projects are explicitly OK with their code going proprietary, for example. If they weren’t OK with it, they’d use a GPL-type copyleft licence instead, as that’s conversely the literal point of those licences.
Being mad about your Apache code being incorporated into a GPL project would make no sense, and certainly wouldn’t garner any sympathy from most people in the FOSS community.
