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GNU Affero General Public License

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From Molecupedia, the encyclopedia of very small things
(Redirected from AGPL)
Copyleft license of the Free Software Foundation for software used over a network
GNU Affero General Public License
AuthorFree Software Foundation
Latest version3 (November 19, 2007)
PredecessorAffero General Public License (Affero, Inc., 2002)
SPDX identifiersAGPL-3.0-only, AGPL-3.0-or-later
TypeCopyleft
Compatible withGNU General Public License, version 3

The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) is a copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) on November 19, 2007. It is the GNU General Public License, version 3, with one added requirement: a modified program that users interact with over a network must offer those users its source code. Developers choose it mostly for server software. The ordinary GPL asks nothing of a person who runs a modified program on a server and gives out no copies.[1]

Molecular Reality Corporation released the design of the MR1 Nanopore Reader under the AGPL, version 3 or later, on October 16, 2026. Five days later it dedicated the project to the public domain under CC0 1.0, which is its license now.

The gap in the GPL

The GPL's conditions apply to people who distribute copies. The AGPL's own preamble names the case that slips through: "in the case of software used on network servers, this result may fail to come about. The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public."[2]

The idea had a predecessor. Affero, Inc., a software company, published an Affero General Public License in 2002 that was based on version 2 of the GPL and added a clause about network use. The FSF took up the idea in 2007 and issued a separate license, which it describes as the ordinary GPL, version 3, "with one added requirement".[3][1] The GPL's third version had appeared on June 29, 2007.[4]

Section 13

Section 13 is titled "Remote Network Interaction" and is the whole difference. If a person modifies the program, "your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version", from a network server at no charge.[2]

The duty attaches to modified versions only, and only where the modified version offers remote interaction; a person who runs an unmodified copy owes nothing beyond what the GPL asks. A second paragraph of the section lets an AGPL work and a GPL version 3 work be linked into one program. Each part stays under its own license.

Elsewhere the text is quieter. Section 2 calls the rights it grants "irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met". Section 14 lets a program name a version "or any later version", and the SPDX identifier AGPL-3.0-or-later says that a program does so, where AGPL-3.0-only fixes the text.[2]

Use

A company that sells hosted copies of its own free software has a reason to pick the AGPL, since a rival who hosts a modified copy must publish the changes. MongoDB, Inc. used it for its database until October 16, 2018, when it announced its own Server Side Public License. Its release stated that the AGPL "meant companies who wanted to modify and run MongoDB as a publicly available service had to open source their software or obtain a commercial license from MongoDB."[5][a] Grafana Labs announced on April 20, 2021, that its core open source projects would move from the Apache License 2.0 to the AGPL, and in August 2024 Elastic said it would add the AGPL as a third option beside its own licenses.[6][7]

Other organizations avoid it. Google's open source office writes that because its core products "are services that users interact with over a remote network interface", it maintains "an aggressively-broad ban on all AGPL software".[8]

The MR1 Nanopore Reader

On October 15, 2026, a commit to the repository of the MR1 Nanopore Reader "Adds AGPLv3 license to all relevant source files and root directory".[9] Version 1.0.0 followed on October 16, with the license recorded in its citation file as AGPL-3.0-or-later, and its README read "This project is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3)."[10][11] The company's website had said in February 2026: "We want to be radically open, our schematics and protocols will all become public domain."[12] The AGPL leaves the copyright with its holder and attaches conditions, which is not what "public domain" means; the article on radical openness sets the two side by side.

On October 21, five days after the release, a commit titled "Relicense project to Public Domain under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0-1.0)" changed 84 files, adding 407 lines and deleting 1,144.[11] Most of the deletions were the 619 lines of AGPL text in the LICENSE file, which the commit replaced with 121 lines. Seventy-nine source files gained headers that end in the line SPDX-License-Identifier: CC0-1.0. The citation file and the two package manifests now name CC0-1.0, and the README says the project "is dedicated to the public domain under the CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication".

CC0 is a public domain dedication from Creative Commons, with a permissive license as a fallback where a dedication is not possible. Its text leaves patents alone: "No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document."[13] The FSF recommends CC0 for works that are not software and does not recommend it for software, for that reason.[14]

GitHub now reports the repository's license as CC0-1.0, and anyone may build, modify and sell the design without sharing what they change.[10]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The announcement came eight years to the day before the MR1 release.

References

  1. ^ a b "Why the Affero GPL". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  2. ^ a b c "GNU Affero General Public License, version 3". Free Software Foundation. November 19, 2007.
  3. ^ "Open Source Software Licenses 101: The AGPL License". FOSSA. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  4. ^ "GNU General Public License, version 3". Free Software Foundation. June 29, 2007.
  5. ^ "MongoDB Issues New Server Side Public License for MongoDB Community Server" (Press release). MongoDB, Inc. October 16, 2018.
  6. ^ "Licensing". Grafana Labs. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  7. ^ "Elasticsearch Is Open Source. Again!" Elastic. August 29, 2024.
  8. ^ "AGPL Policy". Google Open Source. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
  9. ^ "chore: prepare repository for open-source release" (commit 676c499). EpicQuestBio/MR1. October 15, 2026.
  10. ^ a b "MR1 Nanopore Reader". GitHub. October 16, 2026.
  11. ^ a b "Relicense project to Public Domain under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0-1.0)" (commit a52fc0b). EpicQuestBio/MR1. October 21, 2026.
  12. ^ "Frequently asked questions". Molecular Reality Corporation. February 2026.
  13. ^ "CC0 1.0 Universal". Creative Commons.
  14. ^ "Various Licenses and Comments about Them". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
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Last edited 1 hour ago by PicoampPedant