> /v1/glossary/agpl · LICENSE
GNU Affero General Public License(AGPL)
The strongest copyleft license — anyone running modified AGPL code as a network service must release their source code.
The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), in its most common form AGPLv3, closes a "loophole" in the regular GPL: under the GPL, you can modify the code and run it as a SaaS without ever distributing your modified binary, so the copyleft never triggers. AGPL fixes that — running modified code as a network-accessible service is treated as distribution, requiring the modified source to be released.
AGPL is OSI-approved as open source. It's compatible with most permissive licenses (you can incorporate MIT/BSD code into AGPL projects). It's NOT compatible with most copyleft licenses (you can't link AGPL code into a GPL-only project without complications).
Used by: NextCloud, Mastodon, Gitea, Plausible, Listmonk, MinIO, GhostCMS, and many self-hosted projects that explicitly want to prevent commercial cloud services without source-sharing.
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