License conflicts make it illegal to run c9/core with its AGPL dependencies

[ogier]

Hi c9,

The license you've chosen for c9/core makes it illegal to run this software (even for non-commercial purposes). If we combine your c9/core code and your AGPL dependencies and then provide access to the combined program over a network, we are violating section § 5.c of the AGPL which states that we must provide the source code of the combined program under the AGPLv3 or GPLv3 license. Your license has additional restrictions which mean that we can't do so.

Note that the FSF believes this applies to plugins like the c9.ide.* libraries: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins

Presumably this doesn't affect you because as copyright holders of the AGPL libraries, you can give yourself whatever permissions you like to run with a closed source c9/core. But to the rest of us, having access to the source of c9/core isn't very helpful without the permission to legally use it.

Best,
Alex Ogier

[javruben]

Alex,

Thanks for reporting this! We solved the issue by dual-licensing these plugins. They are now released under both the AGPL and the Cloud9 SDK license. We have updated the licenses for each of the repos, such as this one: https://github.com/c9/c9.ide.language/blob/master/LICENSE

We also updated the documentation on our licenses here:
http://cloud9-sdk.readme.io/v0.1/docs/the-licenses-for-cloud9-sdk-and-packages

Best,
Ruben

[ogier]

Thanks, Ruben. Good to have clarification.