Affero GPL Draft Posted for Discussion

Aug 16, 2007

Jan Rähm

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has completed and posted the final draft of the GNU Affero GPL Version 3 (AGPL).

The Affero GPL is identical with the GNU Public License in Version 3 in most parts, with just one paragraph distinguishing the two licenses: Item 13 Paragraph 1 stipulates that the source code of software used remotely must be made available free of charge. This refers to web applications such as content management systems where users only interact with the front-end. To allow users to view the source code, Affero has developed the Affero GPL in cooperation with FSF.

The first version of the AGPL dates back to the year 2002 and was a modified version of GPLv2. AGPL and GPL have been incompatible since the introduction of GPL Version 3. The current draft is designed to resolve this issue. AGPLv3 is also compatible with the Apache License 2.0.

The discussion concerning AGPLv3 is now on. A date has not been fixed for the final AGPLv3 release.

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