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Bradley Kuhn, coverage fellow at the Software Freedom Conservancy, claims a California federal court has misinterpreted model 3 of GNU Affero Overall Public License (AGPLv3) by permitting it to be mixed with the Standard Clause software license.
Kuhn, who created the Affero clause in the AGPLv1 and co-drafted v3, expects to encourage as an professional gaze for defendants PureThink and founder John Designate Suhy, who had been sued by database biz Neo4j in November 2018, for alleged trademark and competitors law violations.
PureThink at the time disbursed database software called ONgDB, which changed into marketed as an begin-supply licensed model of Neo4j EE.
Neo4j EE is below a mixed AGPLv3+Commons Clause license – the Commons Clause modified the APGLv3 by adding a restriction that forbids the sale of the software. On the other hand, PureThink supplied a forked model of the Neo4j EE database software below the APGLv3 alone, having removed the Commons Clause from its model of the software.
So Neo4j and its Swedish subsidiary sued PureThink and others claiming that they had violated the license terms and had infringed Neo4j’s logos.
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In Might perchance 2021, Neo4j received a partial abstract judgment [PDF] when the think overseeing the case granted the company’s request for a non permanent injunction in response to its trademark and unfair competitors claims.
PureThink changed into enjoined – till the matter can be resolved – from “promoting, promoting, representing or referring to ONgDB as a free and begin supply topple-in substitute for Neo4j Endeavor Edition” and making false representations about ONgDB to customers.
The US Ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals therefore upheld that injunction, and the case has persisted up to now.
Amongst the final disputed factors to be resolved, the most most famous for the Free and Originate Source Software (FOSS) community is whether Neo4j’s concatenation of the AGPLv3 and Commons Clause is allowed.
Kuhn, in an professional file [PDF] ready for the case, acknowledges that the AGPLv3 language can be re-mixed and feeble in another license, as long as that license is no longer called the AGPLv3. He cites MongoDB’s modified AGPLv3 license, referred to as the Server-Aspect Public License, to illustrate of how the AGPLv3 can be altered into something that is no longer a FOSS license.
Nonetheless if the license is referred to as the AGPLv3, then its Further Restrictions Clause – which lets in customers of APGLv3 licensed software to steal away added licensing terms – could bear to aloof follow. If the court accepts that argument, it will be a famous reversal: PureThink would be allowed to fork Neo4J EE below the AGPLv3.
A trial date has but to be plot but several possibilities in July, 2023, bear been proposed. ®