History
In 2000, while developing an e-learning and e-service business model, Henry Poole met with Richard Stallman in Amsterdam where they discussed the ASP loophole in GPLv2. Over the following months, Stallman and Poole discussed approaches to solving the problem. In 2001, Poole founded Affero, Inc. (a web services business), and he needed a license that would require distribution by other organizations who used Affero code to create derivative web services. At that time, Poole contacted Bradley M. Kuhn and Eben Moglen of the Free Software Foundation to get advice on a new license that would close the ASP loophole in GPLv2.
Around late February 2002, Kuhn suggested, based on the idea of a program that prints its own source code, that GPLv2 be supplemented with a section 2(d) that would require derivative works to maintain a "download source" feature that would provide complete and corresponding source code. Kuhn argued that there was precedent for such a requirement in GPLv2 section 2(c), which required preservation of certain features by downstream distributors and modifiers.
Moglen and Kuhn wrote the text of the proposed new section 2(d), and provided it to Poole, who then requested and received permission from the FSF to publish a derivative of GPLv2 for this purpose. In March 2002, Affero, Inc. published the original Affero General Public License (AGPLv1) for use with the Affero project and made the new license available for use by other software-as-a-service developers.
The FSF contemplated including the special provision of AGPLv1 into GPLv3 but ultimately decided to publish a separate license, nearly identical to GPLv3 but containing a provision similar in purpose and effect to section 2(d) of AGPLv1. The new license was dubbed the GNU Affero General Public License, the retention of the Affero name indicating its close historical relationship with AGPLv1. The GNU AGPL was given version number 3 for parity with the GPL, and the current GNU Affero General Public License is often abbreviated AGPLv3.
The finalized version of AGPLv3 was published by the FSF on November 19, 2007.
Stet was the first software system known to be released under AGPLv3 (on November 21, 2007), and is the only known program to be used primarily for the production of its own license.
Read more about this topic: Affero General Public License
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