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A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

element.io

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Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#61

Post by hedora »

Macha wrote: post #57
phoronixrly wrote: post #55

How refreshing, an open-source company choosing the AGPL instead of some contrived homebrew license! I welcome this change - as I've stated multiple times here, we need more AGPL-licensed software!

AGPL+CLA that assigns copyright to them. So element can do anything but others are held to the AGPL. I mean, it's better than SSPL, but considering how heavily they've marketed in the past on matrix being truly open, it's a little disappointing that they've chosen to go to asymmetric openness.

The asymmetry only lasts as long as their branch is better than some community fork.

That’s approximately as long as we have between now and when they stop investing in improving the end user experience.

This is pretty close to ideal IMO.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#62

Post by Pannoniae »

Macha wrote: post #57
phoronixrly wrote: post #55

How refreshing, an open-source company choosing the AGPL instead of some contrived homebrew license! I welcome this change - as I've stated multiple times here, we need more AGPL-licensed software!

AGPL+CLA that assigns copyright to them. So element can do anything but others are held to the AGPL. I mean, it's better than SSPL, but considering how heavily they've marketed in the past on matrix being truly open, it's a little disappointing that they've chosen to go to asymmetric openness.

I don't think SSPL is worse than AGPL in practice, in fact it is better.

The SSPL is effectively a stronger AGPL. This makes it non-OSI-approved, but the licence itself is completely fine. The major difference is that the SSPL also mandates that you release everything needed to run the software, not just the software itself.

For reference, it's worth to read the OSI's blogpost about this, it's quite illuminating: https://blog.opensource.org/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l...

It's also worth mentioning that most of the attacks against the GPL, AGPL and SSPL are done by corporate shills, and OSI is also full of them. They pretend to support "non-discrimination of fields of endeavour" but they are undermining free software to SaaS-ify it. Don't fall for the "SSPL is not open source" propaganda.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#63

Post by ensignavenger »

Arathorn wrote: post #39
tpush wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're trying to monetize other's contributions without giving them the right in return.

If folks want to keep their contributions on their own fork and not sign a CLA that's fine too. Yes, we're trying to monetise our code in order to pay folks to keep working on it.

Yet I don't get to sell it (edit to clarify: under a proprietary license, like Element corp) in order to pay for my contributions, or for my own employees contributions? So you are saying you don't trust the Matrix community, present or future?

Plenty of companies survive without CLAs and pay folks to work on open source. I appreciate the business interests, but there are better ways to manage open source projects than CLAs.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#64

Post by exabrial »

I do appreciate _not_ using some home made license, thank you.

Personally though, I find the AGPL too restrictive for projects. The [OSI Certified] EUPL I think is perfect:

* If you don't modify the code: Behaves like the ASL2.0

* If you do modify the code:

    * Behaves like the LGPL in that your private codebase remains private, but changes to the library must be submitted back during a 'distribution' event

    * Behaves like the AGPL: Offering a service that uses the library counts as a 'distribution'

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#65

Post by csdreamer7 »

Macha wrote: post #57
phoronixrly wrote: post #55

How refreshing, an open-source company choosing the AGPL instead of some contrived homebrew license! I welcome this change - as I've stated multiple times here, we need more AGPL-licensed software!

AGPL+CLA that assigns copyright to them. So element can do anything but others are held to the AGPL. I mean, it's better than SSPL, but considering how heavily they've marketed in the past on matrix being truly open, it's a little disappointing that they've chosen to go to asymmetric openness.

And?

If they are doing most of the development they need a way to finance that.

Selling GPL exceptions is a Stallman approved tactic.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#66

Post by alwayslikethis »

phoronixrly wrote: post #55

How refreshing, an open-source company choosing the AGPL instead of some contrived homebrew license! I welcome this change - as I've stated multiple times here, we need more AGPL-licensed software!

As an additional plus, I think many SaaS companies (e.g. Google) ban the use of AGPL software on their company computers. The more advantages we can give to non-big tech developers, the better.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#67

Post by COGlory »

Arathorn wrote: post #49
tpush wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I can choose not to contribute. But I'm not able to sell commercial licenses of your contributions. This fundemental asymmetry is incredibly unfortunate for a project whose stated mission is being a fundamental communication layer.

If it's any consolation, the fundamental asymmetry replaces a previous asymmetry that Element uniquely donated all of its core Matrix code, including ownership, to the Foundation. But yes, I wish that the economics balanced without a CLA. But they don't.

I have high hopes for the future of Matrix in large part because of the Matrix Foundation. But what happens at Element when you and Amandine leave? What stops Element from being bought by a huge corporation that takes the whole thing proprietary and kills it?

I'm sympathetic to the position that you find yourself in here (I have a standing recurring donation to the Matrix Foundation). But this seems substantially less secure of a future.

I don't know if it would work from a legal perspective, but it'd be nice if there was some sort of dead-man's switch.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#68

Post by ensignavenger »

Arathorn wrote: post #49
tpush wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I can choose not to contribute. But I'm not able to sell commercial licenses of your contributions. This fundemental asymmetry is incredibly unfortunate for a project whose stated mission is being a fundamental communication layer.

If it's any consolation, the fundamental asymmetry replaces a previous asymmetry that Element uniquely donated all of its core Matrix code, including ownership, to the Foundation. But yes, I wish that the economics balanced without a CLA. But they don't.

I thought Element was founded after the Matrix Foundation, and thus Element has been using the Foundations code all along? Yes, they have continued to voluntarily contribute to the Foundation, knowing that it was in their own best interests to grow the Matrix community.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#69

Post by ryukafalz »

ensignavenger wrote: post #59
bogwog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one should ever sign a CLA that gives a company more rights to your contributions than you get from theirs. Why not? I've signed CLAs to contribute to open source projects that I use every day. These projects already offer me tremendous value for free, and while my contributions may help other people, they mostly help me since they tend to be fixes for problems that I personally have with them. Having the fix co…

There have been GPL/AGPL projects in the past that used CLAs and gone propeietary... I don't have the details at the moment, but I prefer to the ounce of prevention, rather than waiting for it to happen to me.

There have also been Apache v2-licensed projects that have not used CLAs and gone proprietary. The risk of a proprietary fork by Element is not changing as a result of this, and actually the risk of a proprietary fork by anyone else (that includes post-relicense changes) goes away.

I too would prefer AGPLv3 with no CLA, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen at the moment, and this seems like a step in the right direction.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#70

Post by ensignavenger »

freedomben wrote: post #51
ensignavenger wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the AGPLv3 is a poor choice for what is essentially the reference implementation of the Matrix Protocol. The whole point of a protocol is to allow different implementations. Having a base implementation that others can freely fork and develop into whatever they want with whatever license model they want is a good thing for the protocol. I can understand if the Foundation were to maintain a very basic referenc…

This is an interesting point and does sound good in theory, although in practice it's just the for-profit proprietary companies who are doing the forking and expanding, and then making a ton of money and not contributing anything back to the reference implementation. I do also dislike the CLA, but I'm torn because if anybody should be making the money from these custom extensions/implementations, it should be the com…

I haven't analysed this myself, but the Matrix Foundation website just minutes ago still gives a strong impression otherwise.
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