8 ms·

NetBird Is Embracing the AGPLv3 License

88 points by braginini 1y ago

braginini 1y ago
In order to safeguard the long-term innovation, sustainability, and collaborative spirit of NetBird, we are switching to the AGPLv3 license - ensuring it remains a powerful, community-driven resource for decades to come.
grandfugue 1y ago
Looks like AGPL is a new norm? Redis switched to AGPL too. SSPL is also common on the server side. Curious of how you view AGPL vs. SSPL and choose the former.
- satvikpendem 1y ago
  They're switching because they saw the failure of doing the source-available rugpull and causing other, sometimes even more successful, forks to show up, like Redis and Valkey. SSPL is not open source so it's not something I'd ever choose.
  - braginini 1y ago
    +1
- braginini 1y ago
  SSPL is appealing for business but it is not open source. That is a deal breaker for us. We want to remain open source under a license that is recognized as open source.
  - immibis 1y ago
    SSPL is open source by every definition. The OSI rejected it, but their explanation for why boils down to "neener neener" (it's not backed by any facts). Most other organizations haven't bothered to take a position because no notable software uses it and it's not worth the hassle to evaluate (mongodb and redis have better alternatives so nobody cares about them).
    - immibis 1y ago
      late addition: the OSI is a consortium of software and cloud companies; the ones whose business model is ruined by SSPL. They aren't neutral and we probably shouldn't let them be the arbiters of what counts as open source. Foundations run in a more non-profit, community-oriented way include the FSF, EFF, and Debian, none of which made any significant comment. Debian has excluded SSPL software, but their criteria for inclusion are stricter than simply "is it open source?" and they announced it was simpler to replace them with their superior non-SSPL equivalents than to actually tackle the question.
moomin 1y ago
More and more firms are realising that AGPL coupled with dual licensing allows them to be open source whilst protecting their commercial interests.
- echelon 1y ago
  AGPL doesn't have the critical "no commercialization" clause that prevents a direct competitor. It just prevents hyperscalers. AGPL will stop Amazon. It won't stop WP Engine. There needs to be a license that enables your customers to use you freely, but not your competitors from reselling your hard work.
  - jchw 1y ago
    Your customers, potential competitors, and even hyperscalers are all possibly the same people at different points. AGPL works because corporate lawyers are horrified by it, not because it actually discriminates against hyperscalers. If you find something that even sane lawyers wouldn't tolerate, then you have greatly limited the benefits of being open source in the first place. If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source. If you want to protect your project from being resold by potential competitors, do not release it as open source. I think this problem might solve itself, though. Slowly but surely, companies and power users have become very wary of VC funded companies making big promises and big open source releases, with the knowledge that there is rarely a plan for sustainability and that there is a good chance if they stand on that rug it could be pulled later. Soon, if trends continue, the advantages that you once got from announcing something as open source will start to evaporate and turn into a liability as people start seeing ahead to the eventual "but of course we have to be able to monetize this eventually" stage. The way I see it, a project can always be open sourced later on once there's a way to do it and ensure the company can remain sustainable. For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do.
    - resiros 1y ago
      > For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do. I can't even.. Seriously, I don't understand where your argument is coming from. Because, if you look at it from the greater good perspective, commercial open-source is one of the only venues to build high quality software that can be freely self-hosted, modified and built-upon. Yet, you basically push for people building closed source software, due to what I understand is dogmatic believe of what open-source should mean. > If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source. Based on a definition, bought and sponsored by the hyperscaler lobbies. Why the hell would discriminating against hyperscaller selling the product makes it non "open-source". 99.9999% users of open-source are not hyperscaler wanting to host and sell the product and will get value from the project.
ognarb 1y ago
Honestly I think it's fair. Really the only people affected by this change are people creating proprietary forks, everyone else benefits from this change. I just wish there was a way to ensure that the company itself doesn't do a proprietary fork.
- whartung 1y ago
  Simple. Don't have contribution agreements. Contributors maintain their copyright so as they can prevent relicensing. Mind, FSF requires copyright for their submissions (I believe), but they're, arguably, a "good actor" in this space. But, if the code base becomes a patchwork of contributors, it can become difficult to relicense.
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    FSF stopped requiring contributor agreements years ago.
- sneak 1y ago
  It’s not fair. The AGPL violates freedom 0 and is nonfree. https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/ https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/ Running a SaaS with in-house modifications is a protected use case for free software. The AGPL is a EULA masquerading as a license.
  - triknomeister 1y ago
    Definition of freedom has changed in cloud era. The idea behind GPL was, if you modify your code and distribute it, you need to contribute back the changes, with the wider goal of increasing the commons. All the legalese was just to make sure that the idea worked. In the era of cloud, distribution needs to include distribution over wire, because so many apps are now run in the cloud. And that's why AGPL. It preserves the spirit of GPL in modern times.
    - sneak 1y ago
mac-attack 1y ago
Licensing talk is confusing to someone not steeped in it. I talked to Claude about it 1-2 weeks ago when it was first announced and it was framed as a reinforcement of FOSS ideals. I actually made the jump from tailscale -> netbird last month. Definitely more work and learning, but much more aligned w/ my perspective of self-hosting and open-source software. (Yes I thought about headscale but the YouTube reviews of netbird won me over).
- braginini 1y ago
  What did you find harder to achieve with NetBird than with Tailscale? I refer to more work and learning. Or is it purely related top self-hosting?
  - mac-attack 1y ago
    Going from tailscale in the cloud -> self-hosting netbird required a richer mental model so I had to learn more about routing, why ZTNA is better, what is OIDC, etc I do think that netbird's documentation is easier to read than tailscale's, but the tone does still assume a solid foundational networking background in places. My uneducated guess is that the product is appealing to networking professionals, but a growing number of current/former tailscale users that are otherwise new to networking, but familiar w/ self-hosting. With the latter group, there's a steeper learning curve (that would also be there for headscale or most other self-hosted mesh VPN solution fwiw)
resiros 1y ago
I think that's perfectly fair. The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage. Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies. COSS companiesare one of the only venues for creating high-quality OSS projects that you can self-host. I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers). Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source? (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md, https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition) Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?
- api 1y ago
  I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies. SaaS, meanwhile, is the least open and least free model of software distribution, significantly less open or free (as in freedom) than closed-source commercial software you run yourself. This model, SaaS, is powered from the ground up by open source, and most SaaS gives little or nothing back. Some SaaS is not much more than a management and UI layer built around pre-existing open source standards and code. Something is very wrong if open source exists largely to enable the least free model of software distribution. Open source as currently conceptualized is stuck in the pre-SaaS eras of the 1980s and 1990s and refuses to adapt to what "free" and "open" mean in the new landscape. It doesn't help that the OSI is fully captured by companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta with a vested interest in promoting the SaaS and cloud-first model. If local-first ever gained traction it would be a threat to not just their SaaS products but their incredibly lucrative cloud businesses.
  - phkahler 1y ago
    >> I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies. I've used Free Software and Open Source over 20 years and have never paid a SaaS company a dime. OTOH the most valuable software that I regularly use is Free Software as opposed to Open Source Software. So maybe the OSS really is primarily free labor for SaaS?
xxpor 1y ago
>The BSD-3 license, under which NetBird has operated until now, is a permissive license. It was instrumental in our early growth, offering maximum flexibility and encouraging wide adoption. However, this permissiveness also presents a significant long-term challenge with an imbalance where the value created by a community can be captured and privatized, ultimately undermining the sustainability of the open-source project itself. Well, AGPLv3 addresses this imbalance. How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?
- bitpush 1y ago
  That's a weird take. If another $company wants to continue development with BSD-3 license, they can do so starting today and nothing of value would be lost. The change is NetBird company saying, the improvements from now on are AGPLv3 licensed, but that doesnt stop from anyone to fork today and continue with BSD-3 license.
- tokai 1y ago
  They are literally changing license to protect from E³. The only logic that makes what they do E³ is the slavery is freedom logic.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  >How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? It is exactly that. We need more free software which is actually free for everyone and every use case in all the senses of free. We don't need more "free software" except there are owners who get to control who uses it, how they use it, and how they can make money with it. There is SO MUCH WASTE that could be eliminated by a few developers getting paid decent salaries to put their work into the public domain (by this I mean BSD style very permissive licenses). Imagine a grant giving organization that companies were encouraged to give a hundredth of a percent of their revenue to which focused on paying full time developers to build and maintain fully featured tools which are the most useful to society as a whole.
  - anp 1y ago
    I have said a lot of times that I feel like people keep trying to reinvent a state and taxes to pay for shared infrastructure with open source maintenance. I don’t know how to use the state to solve the problem without severely degrading the quality of what gets built though.
OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
When given the choice, there are very few cases where I don't pick the open source product. The peace of mind it won't be shutdown on you, the confidence the company has in their code quality, or the option to ignore migrations and stay on previous versions is worth way more than featureset deltas.
hardwaresofton 1y ago
The future continues to be AGPL: https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source-is-agpl https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source...

88 points by braginini 1y ago

In order to safeguard the long-term innovation, sustainability, and collaborative spirit of NetBird, we are switching to the AGPLv3 license - ensuring it remains a powerful, community-driven resource for decades to come.

grandfugue 1y ago

Looks like AGPL is a new norm? Redis switched to AGPL too. SSPL is also common on the server side. Curious of how you view AGPL vs. SSPL and choose the former.

satvikpendem 1y ago
They're switching because they saw the failure of doing the source-available rugpull and causing other, sometimes even more successful, forks to show up, like Redis and Valkey. SSPL is not open source so it's not something I'd ever choose.
- braginini 1y ago
  +1
braginini 1y ago
SSPL is appealing for business but it is not open source. That is a deal breaker for us. We want to remain open source under a license that is recognized as open source.
- immibis 1y ago
  SSPL is open source by every definition. The OSI rejected it, but their explanation for why boils down to "neener neener" (it's not backed by any facts). Most other organizations haven't bothered to take a position because no notable software uses it and it's not worth the hassle to evaluate (mongodb and redis have better alternatives so nobody cares about them).
  - immibis 1y ago
    late addition: the OSI is a consortium of software and cloud companies; the ones whose business model is ruined by SSPL. They aren't neutral and we probably shouldn't let them be the arbiters of what counts as open source. Foundations run in a more non-profit, community-oriented way include the FSF, EFF, and Debian, none of which made any significant comment. Debian has excluded SSPL software, but their criteria for inclusion are stricter than simply "is it open source?" and they announced it was simpler to replace them with their superior non-SSPL equivalents than to actually tackle the question.

moomin 1y ago

More and more firms are realising that AGPL coupled with dual licensing allows them to be open source whilst protecting their commercial interests.

echelon 1y ago
AGPL doesn't have the critical "no commercialization" clause that prevents a direct competitor. It just prevents hyperscalers. AGPL will stop Amazon. It won't stop WP Engine. There needs to be a license that enables your customers to use you freely, but not your competitors from reselling your hard work.
- jchw 1y ago
  Your customers, potential competitors, and even hyperscalers are all possibly the same people at different points. AGPL works because corporate lawyers are horrified by it, not because it actually discriminates against hyperscalers. If you find something that even sane lawyers wouldn't tolerate, then you have greatly limited the benefits of being open source in the first place. If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source. If you want to protect your project from being resold by potential competitors, do not release it as open source. I think this problem might solve itself, though. Slowly but surely, companies and power users have become very wary of VC funded companies making big promises and big open source releases, with the knowledge that there is rarely a plan for sustainability and that there is a good chance if they stand on that rug it could be pulled later. Soon, if trends continue, the advantages that you once got from announcing something as open source will start to evaporate and turn into a liability as people start seeing ahead to the eventual "but of course we have to be able to monetize this eventually" stage. The way I see it, a project can always be open sourced later on once there's a way to do it and ensure the company can remain sustainable. For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do.
  - resiros 1y ago
    > For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do. I can't even.. Seriously, I don't understand where your argument is coming from. Because, if you look at it from the greater good perspective, commercial open-source is one of the only venues to build high quality software that can be freely self-hosted, modified and built-upon. Yet, you basically push for people building closed source software, due to what I understand is dogmatic believe of what open-source should mean. > If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source. Based on a definition, bought and sponsored by the hyperscaler lobbies. Why the hell would discriminating against hyperscaller selling the product makes it non "open-source". 99.9999% users of open-source are not hyperscaler wanting to host and sell the product and will get value from the project.

ognarb 1y ago

Honestly I think it's fair. Really the only people affected by this change are people creating proprietary forks, everyone else benefits from this change. I just wish there was a way to ensure that the company itself doesn't do a proprietary fork.

whartung 1y ago
Simple. Don't have contribution agreements. Contributors maintain their copyright so as they can prevent relicensing. Mind, FSF requires copyright for their submissions (I believe), but they're, arguably, a "good actor" in this space. But, if the code base becomes a patchwork of contributors, it can become difficult to relicense.
- eikenberry 1y ago
  FSF stopped requiring contributor agreements years ago.
sneak 1y ago
It’s not fair. The AGPL violates freedom 0 and is nonfree. https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/ https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/ Running a SaaS with in-house modifications is a protected use case for free software. The AGPL is a EULA masquerading as a license.
- triknomeister 1y ago
  Definition of freedom has changed in cloud era. The idea behind GPL was, if you modify your code and distribute it, you need to contribute back the changes, with the wider goal of increasing the commons. All the legalese was just to make sure that the idea worked. In the era of cloud, distribution needs to include distribution over wire, because so many apps are now run in the cloud. And that's why AGPL. It preserves the spirit of GPL in modern times.
  - sneak 1y ago

mac-attack 1y ago

Licensing talk is confusing to someone not steeped in it. I talked to Claude about it 1-2 weeks ago when it was first announced and it was framed as a reinforcement of FOSS ideals. I actually made the jump from tailscale -> netbird last month. Definitely more work and learning, but much more aligned w/ my perspective of self-hosting and open-source software. (Yes I thought about headscale but the YouTube reviews of netbird won me over).

braginini 1y ago
What did you find harder to achieve with NetBird than with Tailscale? I refer to more work and learning. Or is it purely related top self-hosting?
- mac-attack 1y ago
  Going from tailscale in the cloud -> self-hosting netbird required a richer mental model so I had to learn more about routing, why ZTNA is better, what is OIDC, etc I do think that netbird's documentation is easier to read than tailscale's, but the tone does still assume a solid foundational networking background in places. My uneducated guess is that the product is appealing to networking professionals, but a growing number of current/former tailscale users that are otherwise new to networking, but familiar w/ self-hosting. With the latter group, there's a steeper learning curve (that would also be there for headscale or most other self-hosted mesh VPN solution fwiw)

resiros 1y ago

I think that's perfectly fair. The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage. Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies. COSS companiesare one of the only venues for creating high-quality OSS projects that you can self-host. I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers). Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source? (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md, https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition) Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?

api 1y ago
I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies. SaaS, meanwhile, is the least open and least free model of software distribution, significantly less open or free (as in freedom) than closed-source commercial software you run yourself. This model, SaaS, is powered from the ground up by open source, and most SaaS gives little or nothing back. Some SaaS is not much more than a management and UI layer built around pre-existing open source standards and code. Something is very wrong if open source exists largely to enable the least free model of software distribution. Open source as currently conceptualized is stuck in the pre-SaaS eras of the 1980s and 1990s and refuses to adapt to what "free" and "open" mean in the new landscape. It doesn't help that the OSI is fully captured by companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta with a vested interest in promoting the SaaS and cloud-first model. If local-first ever gained traction it would be a threat to not just their SaaS products but their incredibly lucrative cloud businesses.
- phkahler 1y ago
  >> I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies. I've used Free Software and Open Source over 20 years and have never paid a SaaS company a dime. OTOH the most valuable software that I regularly use is Free Software as opposed to Open Source Software. So maybe the OSS really is primarily free labor for SaaS?

xxpor 1y ago

>The BSD-3 license, under which NetBird has operated until now, is a permissive license. It was instrumental in our early growth, offering maximum flexibility and encouraging wide adoption. However, this permissiveness also presents a significant long-term challenge with an imbalance where the value created by a community can be captured and privatized, ultimately undermining the sustainability of the open-source project itself. Well, AGPLv3 addresses this imbalance. How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?

bitpush 1y ago
That's a weird take. If another $company wants to continue development with BSD-3 license, they can do so starting today and nothing of value would be lost. The change is NetBird company saying, the improvements from now on are AGPLv3 licensed, but that doesnt stop from anyone to fork today and continue with BSD-3 license.
tokai 1y ago
They are literally changing license to protect from E³. The only logic that makes what they do E³ is the slavery is freedom logic.
colechristensen 1y ago
>How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? It is exactly that. We need more free software which is actually free for everyone and every use case in all the senses of free. We don't need more "free software" except there are owners who get to control who uses it, how they use it, and how they can make money with it. There is SO MUCH WASTE that could be eliminated by a few developers getting paid decent salaries to put their work into the public domain (by this I mean BSD style very permissive licenses). Imagine a grant giving organization that companies were encouraged to give a hundredth of a percent of their revenue to which focused on paying full time developers to build and maintain fully featured tools which are the most useful to society as a whole.
- anp 1y ago
  I have said a lot of times that I feel like people keep trying to reinvent a state and taxes to pay for shared infrastructure with open source maintenance. I don’t know how to use the state to solve the problem without severely degrading the quality of what gets built though.

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago

When given the choice, there are very few cases where I don't pick the open source product. The peace of mind it won't be shutdown on you, the confidence the company has in their code quality, or the option to ignore migrations and stay on previous versions is worth way more than featureset deltas.

hardwaresofton 1y ago

The future continues to be AGPL: https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source-is-agpl https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source...