The AGPL: Solution in Search of a Problem

In the early days of commercial open source, misinformation was a major impediment to adoption. Many enterprises, for example, explicitly forbade usage of code released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). When asked about the justification for this prohibition, the most common response centered around difficult-to-articulate concerns about being compelled to open source code they did not wish to. The fear that this “viral” license would infect their private repositories was rampant.