LXD 5.20 Released With Canonical Changing It To AGPLv3 Licensing

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LXD 5.20 Released With Canonical Changing It To AGPLv3 Licensing

Following Canonical pulling on control of LXD and maintainership being limited to Canonical employees, LXD 5.20 was released today where they have also decided to change its license moving forward to AGPLv3 by default...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/LXD-5.20-Released

[evasb]

Canonical loves a "standard license for server-side code" where the client is open source, but the server is as restrictive as possible to make it harder for other parties to benefit from or even close it altogether, like they made with snaps to monopolize the distribution.

Everyone have to make money and I don't condemn them 100%, but it makes me sad that if Red Hat changes just a little their distribution the community reacts heavily, but Canonical gets away with their worse model that they don't even share the source code of Ubuntu's LTS ESM and actively blocks the access of the source code.

[johnandmegh]

...Canonical gets away with their worse model that they don't even share the source code of Ubuntu's LTS ESM and actively blocks the access of the source code.

I don't see how that link translates to "actively block[ing]" source code - it seemed that the command just needed to be run as root, and that was accepted as the answer? If it's about anyone and everyone being able to access - source is only obligatory if you've received the binaries, they are under no obligation to provide the binaries they developed to anyone and everyone.

[Flaburgan]

AGPL is nice. It's time that corporation contribute back to free software

[Luke_Wolf]

Canonical loves a "standard license for server-side code" where the client is open source, but the server is as restrictive as possible to make it harder for other parties to benefit from or even close it altogether, like they made with snaps to monopolize the distribution.

Everyone have to make money and I don't condemn them 100%, but it makes me sad that if Red Hat changes just a little their distribution the community reacts heavily, but Canonical gets away with their worse model that they don't even share the source code of Ubuntu's LTS ESM and actively blocks the access of the source code.

Are you sure you're posting this on the right site? This is Phoronix not OMGUbuntu. Canonical is a regular target of derision but if there's not as much as you expect, it's because everyone knows Canonical is a shitty company that is trying to find any way they can to establish a proprietary business model so they can LARP as Apple so it's not any more worth saying than "Oracle bad". We've known this at least as far back as them trying to steal money from GNOME back in 2011 through hijacking the Banshee Amazon link.

Red Hat on the other hand prior to the IBM buyout was generally well regarded so any bad behavior on their part is lamented as the corruption of IBM infecting and destroying what was once a good company, and so is still worth talking about.

[jacob]

AGPL is nice. It's time that corporation contribute back to free software

I don't think the AGPL has the power to change much. The large tech-centered corps like Google, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Netflix etc contribute quite a lot already. On the other hand corps in sectors like banks, retail etc don't have the incentive or the culture to l embrace ooen source, they just want to use stuff (and in many cases, they actually prefer if it's proprietary and restrictive, it feels more reassuring and "professional" to them). The AGPL, like other FOSS licences, doesn't force anyone to contribute anything, so they will just keep getting a free ride like always, and that's OK too.

[Britoid]

AGPL is nice. It's time that corporation contribute back to free software

Well, no because it's licensed as AGPL so Canonical can sell proprietary versions which are not under the AGPL, as they can relicense it as much as they want, but prevents others from selling it commercially.

It also means they can take code from Incus but vice versa is more complicated.

[iustinp]

Well, no because it's licensed as AGPL so Canonical can sell proprietary versions which are not under the AGPL, as they can relicense it as much as they want, but prevents others from selling it commercially.

It also means they can take code from Incus but vice versa is more complicated.

They explicitly said that contributors keep their copyright, there's no copyright assignment, so they can't one-side relicense this under proprietary.

I'm surprised at the negative comments here, "closed server side", etc. AGPL is best for today's infrastructure, as GPL worked before the clouds era. Sheesh…

[bug77]

What's the point of LXD? What does it do that LXC doesn't? Is it used by any high-profile project or something?

[bug77]

Canonical loves a "standard license for server-side code" where the client is open source, but the server is as restrictive as possible to make it harder for other parties to benefit from or even close it altogether, like they made with snaps to monopolize the distribution.

Everyone have to make money and I don't condemn them 100%, but it makes me sad that if Red Hat changes just a little their distribution the community reacts heavily, but Canonical gets away with their worse model that they don't even share the source code of Ubuntu's LTS ESM and actively blocks the access of the source code.

I see you got a lot of likes (par for the course, you picked on Ubuntu and defended RedHat), but what exactly is "as restrictive as possible" about AGPL? It's the same as GPL, only is explicitly covers access over a network. How much "unrestricted" can you get?