> That’s why I recently switched it from AGPL to Apache: I want everyone to use Herdr freely, without any problem.

I'm curious what the actual problems with AGPL were.

The copyleft licenses are toxic for adoption. Companies default away from them because there are a lot of murky unknowns (e.g. if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is that extending it? Does that service’s source have to be shared?) that simply aren’t worth the hassle.

If you want your library to get traction with many real world use cases, you need to have a permissive license. If you want to stick to the principles, you’re going to sacrifice adoption.

Not saying one is better than the other, but there’s a tradeoff.

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guywithahat 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using software that has requires people to contribute back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most important metric for herdr right now.

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They're right, but they're presenting it in a way as if the toxicity of AGPL is the actual truth, and not just the opinion of greedy corporations.

Being toxic to greedy corporations but beneficial to everyone else is the point of the GPL licenses.

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icantevenhold 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But it’s not only toxic to the greedy corporations but all the others as well, hence

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a2ff6eeb0 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why is it toxic for me to need to push my code to a git repo if I start using it in my services, if I'm not trying to act as a for-profit corporation?

	▲	jraph an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You can totally make profits by selling services based on AGPL code btw, it's completely fine. As long as you redistribute your derivative work as AGPL too. There's nothing toxic in the AGPL for you as long as you don't want to make that code proprietary (even without making profits)

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How so? You might be thinking of SSPL.

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jraph an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

No. There's no restriction of usage in the (A)GPL. Anyone, including big corps, can use AGPL software. Preventing them to use the software is not the point neither. The point is trying to ensure end user freedom.

They just choose avoid agpl software. Their loss. Unfortunately they also spread FUD on this and many commenters here happily convey it.

	▲	outofpaper 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		AGREED! Its sheer insanity to call the AGPL toxic. The license is actually quite simple if a little wordy. They should have accompanied it with a preamble that was super clear and to the point.So here it is in our 170 words for you to read, share, and use:[28] Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holders] Permission is hereby granted to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files, to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and sell copies of the software, including for commercial purposes, subject to the following conditions: If you distribute this software, or any work derived from it, you must release the complete source code under this same licence. If you modify this software and users interact with your version over a network — as a web application, an API, or a hosted service — you must offer those users the complete source code of your version, at no charge. All copies must include this copyright notice and this licence. You may not impose additional licence restrictions beyond this. These permissions are irrevocable and royalty-free for the term of copyright. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. This is a plain-language summary. The full legal text of the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3, governs all use for you. Same rights. Same freedoms only a little more opiniated delivery. Same business card. The only difference: when someone takes your code, tweakes it and builds a service on it, the tweaks, the improvements must come back.

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toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the rug pull before taking action (Terraform and Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so far.

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You can just take someone else's permissively licensed code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same trick works for copyleft.

For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.

	▲	toomuchtodo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Was assuming worse case scenario from a licensing compatibility and copyright perspective.

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rajangdavis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can't make money if people use your tool and are required to share their source code

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spudlyo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas. Enshitification is sure to follow in one guise or another.

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rajangdavis 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t know that this qualifies as enshitification… on one hand, the author created something that scratched his own itch, shared it, and now it’s become a tool that he wishes to steward into a way where he can make money.

I don’t know that these are terrible things inherently, it kind of depends if he wishes to extract as money as possible from his users by any means necessary or if he’s truly trying to scale it so it can help people. All we have is this article and infinite speculation.

I personally didn’t find herdr useful, so I have no stake in the direction of what the author decides to do with herdr.

	▲	spudlyo 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In my cynical view, herder now seems to be an attempt to commercialize tmux by adding superficial polish. I am wary of VC backed developer tools that seek to innovate in well established open source niches. Herdr by default is mouse focused, has very friendly UI interactions, and has some niche UI support for agents running in panes. Great. Now it also has a profit motive and ROI pressures. I don't see this ending well.
	▲	inigyou 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If he wants to make money he needs to sell licenses, not give them away for free. To that end, making the free version AGPL is generally a good move. It ensures people can get hooked on your product and when they start working at corporations they have to pay to keep using it.

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gilthelander 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any potential customers that matter have already been advised by their lawyers to not touch AGPL with a 10 meter pole. This includes Google:

https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

This extends way beyond the superficial toxic license stuff. There is a lot of legal ambiguity around copyleft licenses and most companies just don't want to deal with it unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

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koiueo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No money from investors

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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gilthelander 2 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	jbmchuck an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Here you go: https://forklog.com/en/former-coinbase-employee-accused-of-c... https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/corgi-the-buzzy-y-combinat...
	▲	Barrin92 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>Do YC CEO's dress in all white like Boss Hogg? No, of course not, they're your friends. They even have a ping pong table and a smoothie bar. It's like in the Soviet Union, everyone's a comrade, nobody's a boss https://youtu.be/fQlJE7ABNu4