Switch polar license to a copyleft license (AGPL).

[wiki-me]

This is helpful as it prevents some company for forking the code, closing it and then “defeating” polar using aggressive marketing or dirty business practices (wine had companies that forked the code and not give back which eventually led to it being relicensed under the LGPL).

It will also make it easier for the community to trust and invest (code or money) in the project because there is less of chance of him going closed source like reddit.

Linus torvalds (creator of linux) called the GPL “one of the defining factors in the success of Linux” he also talked about how it helps motivate contributors:

A developer would feel that the big company is going to take advantage of their work, said Torvalds. "The GPL ensures that nobody is ever going to take advantage of your code. It will remain free and nobody can take that away from you. I think that's a big deal for community management.

Funding

• You can sponsor this specific effort via a Polar.sh pledge below
• We receive the pledge once the issue is completed & verified

[birkjernstrom]

(Moved from issue to discussion)

Thank you so much @wiki-me for this suggestion, I really appreciate it!

I think the intent here is great. It's been a while since I read the AGPLv3 so I need a bit of a refresher. There also seems to be some contradicting discussions on the topic of changing from Apache 2.0 to AGPLv3 (after a quick search) combined with some other nuances I need to dig into more.

I'll make sure to review more closely and give this some thought and circle back. Quite busy at the moment so in transparency, I think I'll need a few weeks before I can circle back with a proper response and decision.

[wiki-me]

So this was rejected, can i ask why?

Open source comminities had a fairly bitter experience with for profit companies, I will personally assume this is going to become closed source at some point TBH.

[birkjernstrom]

Sorry @wiki-me for the abrupt closing without follow-up - mistake.

I was going to clean-up our discussions with our latest launch. We haven't been using discussions that much, but aim to now towards the future.

I closed this because it wouldn't solve a problem we're facing today. In the event we do run into issues that GPL could help solve, I think we can explore it then. However, ultimately business competition will always come down to who executes best. Code is not going to be the main competitive edge in our specific domain/space. So I'd rather stick with Apache 2.0 for now which is a great license & highly popular one + best aligns with our community at this stage.