Countly

[SethFalco]

Project: https://github.com/Countly/countly-server

Looking for a free forever, open source analytics solution?

— https://countly.com/ (emphasis mine)

Countly Lite — Essential plugins/features and a free-to-use, open source, non-commercial license…

— https://github.com/Countly/countly-server (emphasis mine, this one is ironic because it states open-source and then immediately contradicts it)

Concerns

• Uses a derivative of the AGPL license, but with an additional clause that restricts the right to remove or replace their branding from the source code.

Queries

No public queries had been raised. I emailed them about it during the recruitment process when I applied there 2 years ago, but they ignored my emails. (Note, I backed out of the recruitment process and expressed the licensing qualms in the same email.)

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Hey! Thanks for making a place to bring issues to light. I found you through Brodie's Mastodon, I also wasn't aware that FUTO's had misused (hopefully accidentally) the term open-source, so I hope that's something they address too.

Thanks for making sure the open-source definition actually still means something. 👍🏽

It may be worth looking at this too and including a link to your repo: https://mastodon.social/@johas/112524760073638652

[ssddanbrown]

Thanks for the kind words regarding my efforts @SethFalco, and thanks for opening this. I'll have a look into that FSFE thing to see if I can help provide insight.

In regard to Countly, pretty sure their additional terms do not fit into section 7 of the AGPLv3 as they advise, so can be ignored/removed as per section 10. I'll try to expand on this when communicating with them.

Do you know if there's been any public communication with them on this so far?

After a quick scan, could only find this which is not directly related but does throw an interesting point up that they are potentially relicensing AGPLv3 works (and contributions) against the terms they've been provided under.

Have seen AGPLv3 attempted to be abused to retain specific branding a few times now. TinyMCE used to do it when under the AGPL (since changed), API table in this repo is a similar case.

[ssddanbrown]

Just remembered, this is very close to onlyoffice, who I still need to notify: https://github.com/ssddanbrown/Open-Source-Confusion-Cases/issues/38

[SethFalco]

In regard to Countly, pretty sure their additional terms do not fit into section 7 of the AGPLv3 as they advise

Damn, just read section 7 and 10 and wasn't aware of this. I read a book on open-source licenses, but turns out it didn't cover GPL v3, so I guess I never got the memo.

Sharing in case it's of any interest, given the nature of this repo:

Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing.pdf
— by Andrew M. St. Laurent released under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License

Do you know if there's been any public communication with them on this so far?

I am not aware of any public communication regarding this, sorry!