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If some network client software is released under AGPLv3, does it have to be able to provide source to the servers it interacts with?

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If some network client software is released under AGPLv3, does it have to be able to provide source to the servers it interacts with?

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This should not be required in any typical server-client relationship. AGPLv3 requires a program to offer source code to “all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network.” In most server-client architectures, it simply wouldn’t be reasonable to argue that the server operator is a “user” interacting with the client in any meaningful sense. Consider HTTP as an example. All HTTP clients expect servers to provide certain functionality: they should send specified responses to well-formed requests. The reverse is not true: servers cannot assume that the client will do anything in particular with the data they send. The client may be a web browser, an RSS reader, a spider, a network monitoring tool, or some special-purpose program. The server can make absolutely no assumptions about what the client will do—so there’s no meaningful way for the server operator to be considered a user of that software.

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