Free Software Foundation rides to defend AGPLv3 against Neo4j license add-ons

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) on Monday backed a lone developer's brave effort to overturn a pivotal court ruling that threatens to undermine the AGPLv3 – the foundation's GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.

At stake is the future of not just the AGPLv3, but the FSF's widely used GNU Public License it is largely based on, and the software covered by those agreements. A core tenet of the GPL series is that free software remains free forever, and this is woven into the licenses' fine print. This ongoing legal battle is a matter of whether people can alter those licenses and redistribute code as they see fit in a non-free way, or if they must stick to the terms of an agreement that says the terms cannot be changed.

History

As we reported last week, database maker Neo4j received a partial summary judgment in 2021 for ...