Relevant parts:
Partner represents and warrants that it shall not introduce into WhatsApp’s Systems or Infrastructure, the Sublicensed Encryption Software, or otherwise make accessible to WhatsApp any viruses or any software licensed under the General Public Licence or any similar licence (e.g. GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)) containing a “copyleft” requirement during performance of the Services.
Partner shall not: (i) combine Sublicensed Encryption Software with any software licensed under any version of or derivative of the GNU General Public License (e.g.; GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) in any manner that could cause, or could be interpreted or asserted to cause, the Sublicensed Encryption Software or any modifications to the Sublicensed Encryption Software to become subject to the terms of any version of or derivative of the GNU General Public License or other copyleft open source software
Just dual-license your software under the TNGPL (Totally Not GPL) license that just so happens to afford the same protections.
i THINK they’re saying that they sublicense a library to do encryption in order to talk to WhatsApp and that it’s this software that they won’t be allowed to be included in GPL-licensed software because it may be that in the future that implies a release of source code?
this doesn’t seem unreasonable as long as you can create a facade or abstraction that’s NOT GPL-licensed to interact with WhatsApp that then interacts with your GPL code?
or i could be misreading entirely
Pardon me, but would this not interfere with partners’ ability to host services via 99% of Linux-based servers?
No, running software on GPL licensed systems does not make the guest software GPL.
But, The AGPL is “infectious”, and one bit of AGPL can make your entire project subject to the AGPL. It’s a legal nightmare and many businesses outright ban the use of AGPL software.
Presumably, they’ve just blanket banned GPL to avoid any ambiguity.
What is that bs? So they only interoperate with closed source, for profit services or what? I hope the EU rips them a new one.
No, just GPL licensed source.
MIT, BSD, Apache, and all the other OSI licenses are fair game.
The recent malicious compliance by Meta and Apple goes to show there’s no such thing as “good faith” and the EU is doing a bad job by leaving a bunch of loopholes open.
The EU has done a wonderful job by making the DSA which went into effect yesterday. My personal favorite is up to 10% of global revenue per transgression and 20% for repeat offenses.
