We're also adding some neat things around authentication and access control in a forthcoming product release, if you do decide you want those kind of "serverey" things. See here: http://www.ansibleworks.com/ansibleworks-awx/
But yes, you don't need these, Ansible can exchange variables between hosts in memory without needing a database, etc.
I come from Red Hat and I like the GPL, because it ensures the software remains free. I view GPLv3 as largely a language improvement on GPLv2, which makes it easier to understand and define how it applies.
Ansible being GPLv3 doesn't affect folks much. Your library modules can be licensed in any way you like, and it's fine to shell out and call ansible-playbook. AWX also exists as a nice API layer if you need a web services interface that abstracts you from the license question, so folks looking to do commercial integrations can tap into the REST layer.
AGPL is more restrictive than GPL, in some ways, as you can't use things in a hosted service. We didn't want to be that restrictive.
While AGPL certainly is more restrictive (that is the whole point of the AGPL after all) -- it does of course not prevent the use in a hosted service, it just has a requirement that the end user still has access to the source code (while with GPL you could change large parts of the Free code, and never contribute that back to the users, if you so chose).
As long as there is a REST bridge/layer, any service shouldn't be considered a derived work -- only changes to "core" Ansible would be "covered" by the AGPL.
I'm sure you know this, but it is an important point (just like the GPL never dictates that you have to contribute changes upstream, just to "your" users (which of course might include upstream, and most people feel it is more constructive to give back in the more general sense...)).
I've seen some strange (imnho incorrect) interpretations of the AGPL, hence this comment.
Right! It would prevent people from being able to use it in hosted services that didn't share the source, and we wanted to make sure people could easily use it in those things without any problems.
Ansible is licensed as GPLv3. But it sounds like AnsibleWorks-awx is a commercial-only product? Are future 'pro' features going to only be released and maintained in commercial variants of AnsibleWorks or separate related projects? Would love more transparency about the relationship between open and closed-source products at AnsibleWorks.
I made a similar clarifying request on the Ansible user group forum a few weeks ago but my message was not approved. I believe that these are fair requests and deserve clarification.
We've posted quite a lot about this to the list in the past, I'm not sure what happened to your post.
Ansible is GPL, and we're totally going to keep it just the way it is, and continuing to make it more awesome. (The application is just invoking ansible-playbook).
Why is it commercial? A lot of the stuff we are building is mainly interesting to enterprises -- RBAC, reporting, things like that.
The core things everybody needs to use Ansible today, all the modules, are free software and we will continue to add loads more there. Ansible received over 50 new modules in the last 2 releases.
