I think that since the community funded this project that the code should have a more liberal license so that the community can do what they want with it.
The project also depends on MongoDB, which is also AGPL licensed, which raises the question of if paid hosting of a diaspora instance is 'commercial' and if it requires a MongoDB license from 10gen, I would think that it does.
They should BSD/MIT license their own code, and build more storage options outside of MongoDB. I am surprised that donors didn't insist on a license as part of the kickstart funding.
Only the MongoDB server is AGPL licensed, all of the official clients are Apache licensed; you're free to use mongo for commercial hosted services without getting a commercial license from 10gen provided that you publicly release any changes that you make to the server codebase - you're never required to release the code of your actual application (provided that you're using one of the official clients).
The AGPL (like the GPL) does not allow adding more restrictions. You do not need any further license to use AGPL licensed code in a commercial product, you just have to abide by the license terms of the AGPL.
I assume the 10gen commercial license allows you avoid having to provide source code for your product to your users. (but the mongodb website isn't clear about that).
I would like to make it clear that users of MongoDB don't need to opensource their product, only their changes (if any) to the MongoDB server itself. The commercial license is mostly for companies that have strict (if misguided) "no AGPL" policies. Most users do not need it.
MongoHQ and other companies providing commercial hosting of MongoDB only need a commercial license if they modify the server and don't contribute back. We want to encourage hosting providers which is why we don't require buying a special license.
Damn, I was all excited until I saw that. I think it will probably stifle the spread of Diaspora after the initial excitement dies off. For example, it would make it difficult to run a server with a different theme/UI and custom modifications (maybe some that would help pay for the costs of running the server), and it seems like it would limit Diaspora server ownership to solo techie enthusiasts (maybe with friends and family but no serious mass adoption).
I'm all for free software and all that, and GPL is great for infrastructure software like web servers and databases, but I think a BSD license would probably work better overall for Diaspora adoption and for encouraging more serious developers to work on it.
I think CDDL would potentially be a better license. That would force returns on existing files in the project (keeping it from going closed), but if you have your own changes outside of those files, you should be OK (allowing you to commercialize your enhancements).
