Topic: Affero GPL for Bitcoin projects (Read 448 times)

I have reasons for reconsidering the license of my Amiko Pay software, and because of that, I stumbled upon the Affero General Public License. This free software license requires service providers (typically, the operators of websites) to publish the source code of the service they're running.

I want to ask you, members of the Bitcoin community, how you feel about using this kind of license for Bitcoin-related software. It has the potential to push an entire ecosystem to become open-source-only. This would have interesting consequences: for instance, if an exchange uses AGPL-licensed software, you can easily request their source code and start a competing exchange with exactly the same set of features. It would also, at least in theory, provide some transparency about e.g. how your data is handled in a web service.

The obvious downside would be that people / organizations who don't want to share their code have more difficulty entering the ecosystem; this could create a barrier for adoption. Maybe this is a trade-off between achieving fast adoption of the monetary freedom provided by Bitcoin, and achieving software freedom.

I believe the Bitcoin Core software has a MIT-style license, so it opts for maximum adoption of the software, at the cost that some adopters might keep their software closed-source. Is there consensus that this is the best model?