Russell Beattie

Fabricio posted this morning about Google's resistance to supporting the AGPL on the Google Code site. They've come up with a few excuses, but after Funambol went through the effort to have the AGPL be ISO certified, the GOOG still doesn't want it.

Makes perfect sense, really. Google has made bazillions of dollars using free software in their backend without having to release any of their modifications back into the world. Something like the AGPL which requires server-side modifications to also be released is a direct threat to their way of doing business. Refusing to add AGPL to the list of open source licenses on Google code to help promote is unsurprising, and in fact expected.

Yes, yes - it's better to assume ignorance or stupidity over malice, right? But we all know that Google is chock full of PhD's. Their insistence on not supporting the AGPL isn't an accident or an oversight, but a malicious effort on their part to protect their free ride.

It doesn't matter - the AGPL is a great way to close the OSS serverside loophole and will be adopted by a lot of projects going forward, so the GOOG is going to have to accept it sooner or later.

My guess is that it'll be much, much later if they can help it.

-Russ