That seems like a property of the system and not of the modified version? Which would be a pedantic point, except the license only makes requirements about what the modified version does.
Or if you don’t think a court would see it that way, consider a slightly trickier case:
Company A makes modified versions of Mastodon, BitWarden, or other AGPL software.
Company A sends these to Company B, who hosts them behind a proxy that removes the source offer.
Who is violating the AGPL? Company A modified the software, but left intact the portion that ensures that all users interacting with it receive an offer for the source. Company B is not modifying it, and so isn’t covered by section 13.
To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier work.
Since hosting it behind a proxy only requires making an exact copy, I don’t think that argument would work.
My point (which I intended to elaborate, but didn’t initially have time) is that hosting one of these modern software platforms involves a whole stack of components, any one of which could be modified to make apparently-noncompliant output without technically modifying any of the AGPL components. You could change the third-party templating library used by the Mastodon code, change the language runtime, even modify the OS itself.
Which means I mostly agree with your point: the AGPL is not strict enough to actually ensure what it wants to ensure, and I don’t think that it can ensure that without applying a whole bunch of other unacceptable restrictions.
If company A doesn’t offer source to company B, they’re violating even standard copyleft. It’s unclear in the example whether company A or company B is offering the service to users—that’ll depend on the specific business relationship between them. It would take lawyers and time to figure out if there’s been any infringement for a specific case.
I’d guess there are variations of the arrangement that would infringe, and other variations that would not. I’d also guess that there are ZERO real-world cases where anyone cares and is harmed enough to actually pursue it, and if they did, their software would be dropped from use worldwide long before anyone started publishing their modifications.
If company A doesn’t offer source to company B, they’re violating even standard copyleft.
In this example, A does offer source to B, and it’s B that removes the offer before making the service available to users.
It’s unclear in the example whether company A or company B is offering the service to users
Let’s say B makes the service to users, and pays A to develop the software.
I’d also guess that there are ZERO real-world cases where anyone cares and is harmed enough to actually pursue it, and if they did, their software would be dropped from use worldwide long before anyone started publishing their modifications.
Why would the software be dropped from use? If someone had, say, offered MongoDB-as-a-service with this model during the time when Mongo was hot, my expectation is they would have had many customers.
Let’s say B makes the service to users, and pays A to develop the software.
There’s some subtlety in whether B is paying A as a contract, or buying software, or even just getting it for free as part of a bigger contract—it would come down to a judge to really decide. It might be that nobody is violating, it might be that B is violating. It’s hard to see how A could be violating, as long as they didn’t remove any required upstream capabilities and delivered the source to B.
Why would the software be dropped from use?
Because the risk of lawsuit would be massively increased, by there being an ACTUAL lawsuit happening.
If someone had, say, offered MongoDB-as-a-service with this model during the time when Mongo was hot, my expectation is they would have had many customers.
Mongo didn’t, as far as I know, pursue any AGPL violations. There were a LOT of mongo hosting services around, none very successful, and none, AFAIK, that were making improvements to Mongo—AFAIK, they just distributed the Mongo source when asked, mostly ignoring the viral part of the license. It’s impossible to know whether that was because of AGPL or because people with that expertise used it to improve private instances that their lawyers said didn’t trigger AGPL.
If the offer doesn’t get displayed to the user, the modified version doesn’t offer it.
That seems like a property of the system and not of the modified version? Which would be a pedantic point, except the license only makes requirements about what the modified version does.
Or if you don’t think a court would see it that way, consider a slightly trickier case:
Company A makes modified versions of Mastodon, BitWarden, or other AGPL software.
Company A sends these to Company B, who hosts them behind a proxy that removes the source offer.
Who is violating the AGPL? Company A modified the software, but left intact the portion that ensures that all users interacting with it receive an offer for the source. Company B is not modifying it, and so isn’t covered by section 13.
Edited the post to add this.
There could be an argument that hosting it behind a proxy counts as modification.
They define modification in the license:
Since hosting it behind a proxy only requires making an exact copy, I don’t think that argument would work.
My point (which I intended to elaborate, but didn’t initially have time) is that hosting one of these modern software platforms involves a whole stack of components, any one of which could be modified to make apparently-noncompliant output without technically modifying any of the AGPL components. You could change the third-party templating library used by the Mastodon code, change the language runtime, even modify the OS itself.
Which means I mostly agree with your point: the AGPL is not strict enough to actually ensure what it wants to ensure, and I don’t think that it can ensure that without applying a whole bunch of other unacceptable restrictions.
If company A doesn’t offer source to company B, they’re violating even standard copyleft. It’s unclear in the example whether company A or company B is offering the service to users—that’ll depend on the specific business relationship between them. It would take lawyers and time to figure out if there’s been any infringement for a specific case.
I’d guess there are variations of the arrangement that would infringe, and other variations that would not. I’d also guess that there are ZERO real-world cases where anyone cares and is harmed enough to actually pursue it, and if they did, their software would be dropped from use worldwide long before anyone started publishing their modifications.
In this example, A does offer source to B, and it’s B that removes the offer before making the service available to users.
Let’s say B makes the service to users, and pays A to develop the software.
Why would the software be dropped from use? If someone had, say, offered MongoDB-as-a-service with this model during the time when Mongo was hot, my expectation is they would have had many customers.
There’s some subtlety in whether B is paying A as a contract, or buying software, or even just getting it for free as part of a bigger contract—it would come down to a judge to really decide. It might be that nobody is violating, it might be that B is violating. It’s hard to see how A could be violating, as long as they didn’t remove any required upstream capabilities and delivered the source to B.
Because the risk of lawsuit would be massively increased, by there being an ACTUAL lawsuit happening.
Mongo didn’t, as far as I know, pursue any AGPL violations. There were a LOT of mongo hosting services around, none very successful, and none, AFAIK, that were making improvements to Mongo—AFAIK, they just distributed the Mongo source when asked, mostly ignoring the viral part of the license. It’s impossible to know whether that was because of AGPL or because people with that expertise used it to improve private instances that their lawyers said didn’t trigger AGPL.