The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to review a California district court's ruling in Neo4j v. PureThink, a case that could redefine the eessence of open-source software.

Neo4j, not content with the standard GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3), sprinkled its  secret sauce into the mix and modified the AGPLv3 with additional terms, effectively saying, "Sure, it's open source, but only on our terms."

This creative interpretation led to legal skirmishes over forks of its software, with Neo4j arguing that their bespoke restrictions couldn't be removed to revert to the standard AGPLv3.

PureThink’s John Mark Suhy decided that enough was enough and that "open source" should mean what it says on the tin.  Suhy is now defending the principles of free and open-source software (FOSS) on his own, without the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) backing.

 "I'm doing everything pro se because I used up all my savings to fight it in the lower court," Suhy moaned.

"I'm surprised the Free Software Foundation didn't care much about it. They always had an excuse about not having the money for it."

If the appellate court sides with Neo4j, it could set a precedent allowing licensors to impose unremovable restrictions on open-source software.

This would be akin to letting the fox guard the henhouse, potentially undermining the enforceability of GPL-based licenses and threatening the integrity of the open-source ecosystem.

Suhy warns: "It will create a dangerous legal precedent that could be used to undermine all open-source licenses, allowing licensors to impose unexpected restrictions and fundamentally eroding the trust that makes open source possible."