a fork of AGPL+Commons software claims their fork is just AGPL, and the *upstream copyright holder* accuses them of (among many other things) false advertising for claiming to be free and open source because their fork is still bound by the AGPL+Commons terms

the legal issue is less 'is AGPL+Commons FOSS' and more 'is AGPL+Commons AGPL' and so the *real* headline here is that according to the court the AGPL's 'no further restrictions' binds downstream licensees but not the original authors

i'm guessing there are a handful of GNU diehards who are surprised by this, and apparently there are already a handful who are disappointed, but like. 'AGPL+Commons is actually just AGPL' was never going to persuade anyone who wasn't already a GNU true believer

the defendants point at AGPL's 'If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.' and go 'see? we're totally right' and it's like.

that's how RMS probably wishes it worked, but the court finds that as contained in AGPL+Commons the 'this License' there is AGPL+Commons, not pure AGPL. which it took me a minute to realize is just trivially correct.

it is, of course, inconvenient for the Software Freedom Conservancy that 'this license' means 'this license', and so they would prefer that it not mean that sfconservancy.org/news/2023/feb/…