> or by contacting Element for an alternative license
Ah, selling exceptions. Even Stallman thinks this is legit.
A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
81–90 of 304 posts
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#82Reminder - https://conduit.rs/ Rust implementation of the matrix server stack
If I were starting today, I'd be using conduit, but as it stands, I'm on Synapse and have no migration path for my server.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#83I 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 l…
The last point I never understand. E.g. take Redis if it were licenced in that way: where is the line where it counts as a service? Directly exposing a Redis port? Putting a REST API over the top of it and selling a cache as a service? Making a paid for JWT invalidation service that's basically a small application layer of Redis? Or something else?
I suggest reading the license as IANAL... but my understanding is all three of those would count as a "distribution" event.
Keep in mind, you would only need to "make source available" if and only if you modified Redis. And even in that case, you only have to submit the modifications to Redis. So even though a "distribution event" is happening, if there are no changes to the Redis server or client library itself, you're compliant without doing anything else.
So yeah, all things considered, it'd be a great license for Redis in my opinion.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the only way that Element can retain the right to provide alternative licenses to proprietary forks I have a very straightforward and reasonable solution for you: don't do that.
My understanding is they're already doing it, and they're already allowed to under the previous license. The CLA is also my least favorite part of this change, but it is overall a shift towards copyleft vs. the previous permissive licensing. If this means the project can remain FOSS and the company can continue to work on it, that's a good thing in my book. If they ever relicensed to a proprietary license though I'd…
It's a great step, except that it effectively doesn't matter, because anyone interested in ignoring the copyleft mandate can afford to buy their way around it.
The only effective purpose for a copyleft license here is to get paid for permissive license! I'm not against the Element devs getting paid, and I get that this is their best shot at that. I still won't count this as "a good thing in my book".
The whole point of the [A]GPL is that the end user can access source code. Letting people buy their way out of copyleft effectivley nullifies that.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#85Well, the best of luck to them. All I'm really interested in is whether the new (read, old) overloards at Element have serious plans to revive p2p efforts or not. Going off their behavior on certain github issues, I won't hold my breath and will continue to use briar instead.
>Going off their behavior on certain github issues, I won't hold my breath and will continue to use briar instead.
link?
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
They want to sell sources with alternative license, it's part of their business plan, so CLA is unavoidable.
If I understand correctly: Synapse and Dendrite have been under Apache 2.0 so far, which would allow anyone to turn them into proprietary products. Including Element. With this change, the situation is: Element can make them proprietary but no one else.
It's pretty close, but not exactly.
1. You can still use any code written before today under Apache 2 and build a proprietary version out of that.
2. If you'd like to build a proprietary tool that makes use of the new features Element builds after today, you can do that as well if you negotiate with Element.
But you won't be able to use any of the new work Element does on Synapse after today without either open sourcing your project or paying Element.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Even with a CLA in place, you can still fork, improve and sell Synapse / Dendrite (or derivatives of it), as long as you follow the AGPL.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, the rough timeline is this:
* 2014: Matrix core team creates Matrix, writes Synapse and other implementations, starts writing the Matrix spec
* 2017: Matrix core team wants to be able to focus on this exclusively as their dayjob; creates New Vector (aka Element) to fund their work.
* 2018: Matrix core team establishes the Foundation as a neutral custodian of the standard on behalf of everyone in the ecosystem. Element transfers all its core Matrix IP to the Foundation, and (uniquely) continues to donate its future contributions to the Foundation, hoping that by letting the whole ecosystem build on top, including proprietary forks, Matrix will spread as far and wide as possible to the benefit of everyone, and Element will make enough $ selling Matrix hosting/distributions to keep hiring the core team to work on Matrix.
* 2022: Matrix has spread far and wide, but turns out that in the commercial space, huge companies who bear no cost for supporting the Matrix ecosystem whatsoever discover they can sell proprietary forks for many $. Meanwhile, Element spends its life funnelling most of its time & energy into doing core Matrix ecosystem work, and it turns out that trying to compete with the big guys while all your energy is going into the commons doesn't work.
* 2023: Element decides it can't afford to contribute as Apache any more, and switches to AGPL + CLA, thus requiring the big guys to either opensource their proprietary forks as AGPL or arrange a paid license from Element. Yes, this means that contributors to Synapse will need to sign a CLA to Element, and it's depressing if this hinders community contributions, but it's the least worst solution we can see.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#89Such a casual blog post for what is essentially the announcement of the death of the matrix project.
[deleted]
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 les…
> 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?
If I understand the confirmation statements at https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... , M & A already have way under the majority of votes in Element, and nothing catastrophic happened