On aeneas AGPL license, and a request for comments

[Alberto Pettarin]

Dear all,

yesterday I was asked privately whether a third party can use aeneas in
a commercial, closed-source product. I would like to share the answer,
some comments on it, and also ask for feedback on the licensing policy
of aeneas.

With the absolute mandatory disclaimer that I am not a lawyer (please
consult a professional), the answer is that YES, aeneas can be used in a
closed-source product, provided the terms of the aeneas' license (AGPL
3.0) are fulfilled.

The third party was particularly concerned about the so-called
"virality" of the GPL/AGPL licenses, that is, "if I use aeneas in my
product, do I need to publish my super-secret-money-making code under
AGPL as well?". This is NOT the case.

If your product uses aeneas as a library --- e.g. pip install aeneas &&
import aeneas --- your code is a different thing than aeneas itself, and
can be licensed however you like. You still need to let the user know
that your product uses aeneas, linking to
https://www.readbeyond.it/aeneas/ . Albeit the theme is technically
complex, at least in the European Union it is pretty clear the
difference between "interfacing" with a GPL/AGPL piece of code and
"including/modifying" it.

(Note that, in theory, you should give the end user the full text of the
AGPL license, and a mean to get the source code of aeneas, e.g. by
hosting the copy on your Web site. Since this is burdensome, in lieu of
it, I am fine with a mention and a link to
https://www.readbeyond.it/aeneas/ . This applies even if you offer e.g.
a Web service whose back-end runs aeneas. For example, readiance.org or
aeneasweb.org do it, and correctly link back to the aeneas main page.)

The AGPL "virality" kicks in if you get the aeneas source code, include
it in your product in modified form. In this case, you MUST publish your
modifications, under the same license (AGPL 3.0). Whether you plan to
sell the resulting product, is irrelevant. Note that if your idea is
"let's take aeneas, improve it, and sell it", you will end up needing to
publish ALL of your product --- which obviously will make hard for you
to sell it later.

In summary, the main point of the GPL/AGPL license consists in requiring
"contributing back" any modifications of the original work to the community.

The reasons that lead to the choice of the AGPL license go back to how
my partners and I decided to handle the IP of ReadBeyond Srl when it was
liquidated, and I do not feel like discussing the details here is
relevant at all, now. I just remark that my former partners agreed to
transfer me back the copyright on all IP generated by ReadBeyond Srl,
which is no longer legally existing.

For a while now, I have considered switching to e.g. the Apache 2.0
license with the next major version (aeneas v2), but so far no one has
ever complained about the choice of the AGPL, or requested a "business
friendly" dual-license. Anyway, I would like to solicit comments on the
matter. Thank you.

Best regards,

Alberto Pettarin

[Willem van der Walt]

I am happy with the license as it stands.

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