My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

Doesn't this happen all the time with Ultralytics yolo code? They use an AGPL license, which to my understand means that anything that links with this code also becomes AGPL.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but is the license also viral if there's a network connection involved? i.e. I run the code in a container with a little network interface added ?

And yet Microsoft have release code with different licenses that make's use of Ultralytics code.

I potentially would be interested in using these wildlife detection models in a commercial (Not open source) context but simply don't trust the claim that it would be okay to do so, sounds like a big business risk to me.

What is the opinion of the community of the MIT licenses associated with PyTorch wildlife from Microsoft okay to use in a closed source commercial context? Microsoft have put an MIT license on this, but their code does imports of ultralytics libraries, which I thought were AGPL.

Note: The GPL 3 license from the official yolov9 differs in this, it must be possible to run the same code on the platform, but your usage may be closed source.

I really like the work that Microsoft did with Pytorch Wildlife but not brave enough to trust the MIT license they put on their code that uses Ultralytics code and all attempts to check if it was okay for them to change the licenses seem to indicate that they may not do this.

Love to know for sure. Maybe someone from Ultralytics can point out their view on this?

> their code that uses Ultralytics code [...] if it was okay for them to change the licenses

Did they copy Ultralytics code and change the licence from AGPL to MIT? Or does their code rely on AGPL code without copying it?

The first is not allowed but the second is, because the combined work can still be used under the terms of the AGPL.

> They use an AGPL license, which to my understand means that anything that links with this code also becomes AGPL.

It doesn't work like that.

The code linking with AGPL code needs to be AGPL (or compatible license) to comply with the license.

That doesn't mean that if you link some code with AGPL code it automatically becomes AGPL. It just means it doesn't comply with the license and therefore does not have the right to use the AGPL code.

The remedy to a license violation is not necessarily complying with it. In fact, I've never seen a case where a company using (A)GPL code in such a way was ordered to release their own code with that license. Generally, they have to simply remove the (A)GPL code, pay some damages and that's it. If they want to keep using the AGPL code, then they of course would have to comply with it, but that's their decision at that point.

What specific kind of "linking" is happening here?

If your code is 0% derived from GPL/AGPL code in a copyright sense then there is no virality and you can generally use them together without license worries if you're careful about how you link.