Code licensed under the AGPL must not be used at Google
This post lacks historical context.<p>Google is the company that initiated the whole movement against the GPL and the AGPL. I was in touch with their OSS guru, Chris diBona at the time. Also, Bruno Lowagie&#x27;s book &quot;Entreprenerd&quot; gives some more details about this initiative.<p>In short, Google were caught in violation of the GPL&#x27;s copyleft terms and decided that they could not be caught in violation again on any of their principal technologies. So they started a very public campaign to strip the GPL from the company and because they are so reliant on OSS, to dissuade OSS developers from using the GPL (and by extension the AGPL). At the time, the GPL was, depending on survey the #1 or #2 license in OSS.<p>However, contrary to their public position, Google still uses GPL products <i>widely</i> inside the company. Linux and Java, for example, are both licensed under the GPL and used extensively at Google. And the parts of Android that are based on Linux are licensed under the GPL [0].<p>Note that all major companies that sell licenses to their OSS use the GPL or AGPL licenses. This is because the copyleft provision provides OSS developers with leverage (&quot;Either open-source your app if you use our product for free or buy a license.&quot;) This is what Google does not want to do. None of the more permissive licenses give developers this leverage: under MIT, Apache, and the other licenses, the developer gives up the GPL&#x27;s copyleft leverage.<p>Some companies have followed Google&#x27;s lead and used scanning tools to eliminate GPL&#x2F;AGPL code from their codebases. This is in part due to the copyleft provision and also to the so-called &quot;viral clause&quot; (if any part of the software is GPL&#x2F;AGPL, the rest of the software it&#x27;s part of must also be GPL&#x2F;AGPL). This makes a lot of sense.<p>However, for developers of <i>stand-alone tools</i>, the GPL is a good option and much less disfavored in corporate contexts (as evidenced by the widespread use of Linux, Java, MySQL, etc. in corporations) and the GPL license provides OSS developers a possible monetary stream from companies that want to modify the tool without disclosing the source code.<p>Personal note: all of my OSS projects are released under permissive, non-GPL licenses because I&#x27;m not looking to make a business out of them and I want the widest possible distribution. Here, I simply want to provide context to the OP and clarify that it should be seen in the context of a long campaign by Google to dissuade OSS developers from the GPL&#x2F;AGPL and to point out that those licenses have benefits for projects looking to pursue a business model based on licensing.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;source.android.com&#x2F;setup&#x2F;start&#x2F;licenses" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;source.android.com&#x2F;setup&#x2F;start&#x2F;licenses</a>