⚡️AGPL is not FOSS

Security researcher Jeffrey Paul – known for exposing macOS OCSP tracking of every Mac user and the apps they opened – is taking aim at the Affero GNU Public License (AGPL).

Released in 2007, the AGPL was meant to close a GPL loophole for “providers” like AWS who run Free Software in the cloud without distributing it. It obligates them to publish any changes they make.

The Free Software Foundation wanted this, but Paul argues it violates the first principle of Free Software: the freedoms are permissions, not obligations. It’s also not viable to follow AGPL in a normal development flow, which would need to update a link to the source in real time, as soon as changes were made.

We use AGPL software for Above Share. We felt that this was great from a privacy perspective, but I can see Pauls point - it doesn’t feel like a license, it feels like more restrictions.

🪧 Read the full article on Substack
🎙 Follow the show
🛡 Back to School Tech Awareness Webinar. Register here.