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The Affero GPL: Closing the SaaS Loophole in Open Source Licensing

The Affero GPL: Closing the SaaS Loophole in Open Source Licensing

The AGPL extends the GPL's copyleft to network use — if users interact with AGPL software over a network, the operator must provide source code.

The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) is a copyleft open-source license designed to close the "SaaS loophole" in the standard The GNU General Public License (GPL): How Copyleft Works. Under the GPL, providing software over a network without distributing binaries doesn't trigger the copyleft requirement — you can run modified GPL software as a web service without releasing your changes. The AGPL adds a **network use clause**: if users interact with AGPL-licensed software over a network, the operator must make the complete corresponding source code available to them. This makes it practically impossible to build closed-source commercial services on AGPL code without releasing modifications. ## Notable AGPL Projects - **MongoDB** (before its proprietary relicense to SSPL in 2018) - **Nextcloud** (file sync and collaboration platform) - **Mastodon** (federated social network) - **Grafana** (observability platform) ## Corporate Impact Companies including Google prohibit internal use of AGPL-licensed code due to the strong copyleft implications. This has led some projects to dual-license or choose more permissive licenses to encourage corporate adoption — a strategic tension at the heart of modern open-source business models.

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Law

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91%

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Created

April 13, 2026

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The GNU General Public License (GPL): How Copyleft Works

related Strength: 68%

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