AGPL is a fairly new license that was meant to go GPL-over-networks. However, not being a lawyer, and actually not having read the whole license, I can't understand what exactly you can do freely and what not with AGPL.
My uncertainty is fed by this post about MongoDB (which is AGPL) and even more by the comments below.
If we follow the comments it turns out that you can use AGPL libraries with your closed-source, commercial server-side software, as long as you don't modify the library. Is that the case? Or you have to distribute your entire application when you use an AGPL licensed library?
The case with MongoDB is that it uses Apache license for the client code, which poses another question. What happens if you use AGPL software, but deploy it as a different application that your closed-source commercial one? For example, take iText – it is an AGPL library:
- if you use it and modify it, do you have to open-source your entire application or you have to redistribute only the changes in iText?
- if you use it and don't modify it, do you have to open-source your entire application?
- If you wrap iText in another application that you start as a separate process, but use it from your main application, should you open-source everything, or just the wrapper application? (The wrapper application will be HTTP-based API that will take pdf files and will return the results of using iText as JSON). Can this be used to circumvent the AGPL license?
Note: The question is about AGPLv3
Best Answer
The AGPL is based on the GPL, not the LGPL. It does not contain any linking exceptions, and any work using AGPL code (linked or otherwise, modified or not) must also be AGPL licensed and distributed.
Using separate processes can circumvent the (A)GPL, but this is murky ground. If your end application depends on the external process, such that it wouldn't function properly without it, then it would be considered a derived work of the AGPL software.
In most cases where people use separate GPL applications in closed source programs, they provide the GPL work as an optional extension, or an alternative back-end to some other piece of code etc.
The (A)GPL work cannot be distributed alongside the final application even as a separate app (eg, putting them into the same archive or repository), although it's fine to provide instructions on where to find the GPL work and how to use it with your app.