> > The assumed connection between the number of users and a scale of > contributions does not sound right to me.
I was just suggesting that it's an empirical question which approach will yield more (and better) contributions, and that it likely depends on the particular situation. AGPL will likely scare off any commercial use, so may limit the potential for a large base of contributors (and the smaller base of non-commercial users may not be particularly sophisticated or interested in making the kinds of customizations that would make for useful contributions, or they may not be motivated to get involved because the project is not "popular" and therefore lacks prestige for their resumes). GPL would certainly be better, and I think most of the major CMSes (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla) use that license. However, plenty of CMSes also use LGPL, and a good number use BSD/MIT as well (e.g., Concrete5, django-cms, Radiant CMS and most of the other Rails CMSes). Very few use AGPL. Many popular open sources projects have attracted active communities of contributors with MIT/BSD licenses. The only difference is the case of deploying the software on a server, > which according to AGPL is a form of distribution and would require making > the source code available upon request. However, in practice it is not > always a concern, e.g. when the target deployment happens in the intranet. > Though, in that case, you are giving the software to your employees for free -- which they could then take to a competitor (or their own startup). > Saying that legal department avoids GPL or AGPL and not saying *why* is > not very convincing. Argument from authority is not enough. I think the point was simply that whether or not legal department fear of GPL/AGPL is justified, it is the current reality and will therefore hamper adoption of the product by businesses. > I could agree, that AGPL might be not very convincing as it seems to give > away for what the customer has paid to everyone. However, you have to > remember that potential competition is still bounded by the same license. Yes, but they get to achieve feature parity with the original developer without making any investment, which gives them an advantage. Anthony
