The AGPLv3 is for the new code core writes going forward I would assume.
Distributing a mix of AGPL and GPLv3 code is pretty reasonable to do, right, and I think basically all the user's rights under the GPLv3 are being fulfilled just fine.
I agree the commercial license could be dicey, but I assume in reality it's the usual AGPL thing where it's "If you pay, you don't have to comply with the network-services bit, but you now get the code under the GPLv3, so you have to make a network service and ensure your users _never_ get binaries containing this code".
Or, possibly even more realistically, they've put that there and if anyone says "We'll pay $3M for un-encumbered code" they'll rewrite the code from scratch to make it un-encumbered by the old GPL code, and until someone says a number big enough to cover the rewrite they'll never actually do anything.
Copyright and Licensing
A forward-looking section applying to all new changes going forward I guess.
As long as they've preserved the old copyright notice somewhere, and it's given to users who request it, it doesn't really matter what the README says does it?
I promise I'm not a shill for them. I do think what they're doing comes off as overall not great, but not as "willful GPL violation" (they're still sharing code), and not as egregiously malicious as the blog makes it sound, so the blog author has me a little unsympathetic with their own misleading (in my opinion) phrasing of this stuff.
13. Use with the GNU Affero General Public License.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have
permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed
under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License into a single
combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this
License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work,
but the special requirements of the GNU Affero General Public License,
section 13, concerning interaction through a network will apply to the
combination as such.
Comments
Wait a sec. IANAL, but if I license something to you under the GPLv3, you may not license it to someone else under AGPLv3 or a commercial license.
That being said, libpebblecommon seems to be Apache 2.0. But this part of the diff seems questionable:
Copyright 2025 Core Devices LLC
How does Core own the copyright to this code?
The AGPLv3 is for the new code core writes going forward I would assume.
Distributing a mix of AGPL and GPLv3 code is pretty reasonable to do, right, and I think basically all the user's rights under the GPLv3 are being fulfilled just fine.
I agree the commercial license could be dicey, but I assume in reality it's the usual AGPL thing where it's "If you pay, you don't have to comply with the network-services bit, but you now get the code under the GPLv3, so you have to make a network service and ensure your users _never_ get binaries containing this code".
Or, possibly even more realistically, they've put that there and if anyone says "We'll pay $3M for un-encumbered code" they'll rewrite the code from scratch to make it un-encumbered by the old GPL code, and until someone says a number big enough to cover the rewrite they'll never actually do anything.
A forward-looking section applying to all new changes going forward I guess.
As long as they've preserved the old copyright notice somewhere, and it's given to users who request it, it doesn't really matter what the README says does it?
I promise I'm not a shill for them. I do think what they're doing comes off as overall not great, but not as "willful GPL violation" (they're still sharing code), and not as egregiously malicious as the blog makes it sound, so the blog author has me a little unsympathetic with their own misleading (in my opinion) phrasing of this stuff.
Not exactly the above case, but from the GNU GPL version 3 (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt):