A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

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.

The subject of this discussion is collaboration. You want to benefit from that collaboration without providing collaborators an equal opportunity. By instituting a CLA, you have disincentivized collaboration.

I understand you have determined this to be a good compromise for you and the developers you pay to work on Element. That doesn't make this situation any less bad to the rest of the community.

So that begs the question: will having a stronger source of revenue for your team be worth alienating 3rd-party contributions?

No matter the answer, I think its totally reasonable for those contributors to complain about the situation you have placed them in.

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

#92

Post by jenadine » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #46

freedomben wrote: post #35

There are two related but separate issues here that need to be considered: 1. Relicense to AGPLv3 2. New CLA in place for contributions. For a project like Matrix, the move to AGPLv3 seems clearly a good one. This is not just a library that you add to your app, it's a product in and of itself, and it's been getting abused by proprietary companies who are robbing the ecosystem. From the blog post from Element[1][2]: >…

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…

> The CLA is an absolute atrocity, though. It is a bright line of perdition. No one should sign it.

Could you elaborate what's wrong with the CLA? It's the Apache one which is a reputable open source organisation, I'd imagine it wouldn't be that bad.

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

#93

Post by mgbmtl » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #80

> or by contacting Element for an alternative license Ah, selling exceptions. Even Stallman thinks this is legit. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

A long time ago, I remember a MySQL talk where they explained dual-license as "if you make money, then we make money", while keeping the product FOSS.

I think it's a reasonable simplification.

And if the company changes the licence, then a A/GPL fork can survive (c.f. Hashicorp, which could have probably avoided their issues with a better licence from the start, but at the time no one expected to be eclipsed by big cloud providers with infinite resources).

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

#94

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

dbrgn wrote: post #87

ensignavenger wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the CLA in place, there is no one true Synapse/Dendrite. There is the Element-provided AGPL version, and then there are X many private forks.

The very existence of those forks breaks the community's ability to truly collaborate. Private forks still participate in our ecosystem!

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

#95

Post by Cu3PO42 » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:00 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #80

> or by contacting Element for an alternative license Ah, selling exceptions. Even Stallman thinks this is legit. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

While I don't agree with everything Stallman says and does, I really do appreciate that his position on this issue is not just another axiom, but follows purely from other positions he had already established.

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

#96

Post by WhyNotHugo » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

So AGPL+CLA:

> The benefit of switching to AGPLv3 is that it obliges downstream developers to contribute back to the core project - either by releasing their modifications as open source for the benefit of the whole Matrix ecosystem, or by contacting Element for an alternative license. Future code contributors to Synapse will need to sign a contributor license agreement (CLA)

This makes it clear that they intent to ship under some alternative license, for a fee. They’re making others sign an agreement to ensure that they have privilege to ship the project (or forks of it) under a proprietary license.

I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more. These are step that a organisation takes when they want to move to an open core model and screw over the community. What they are doing is a required step to pull the same stunt as terraform.

It’s technically still open source today, but this consolidates them into a position to change this at will. Don’t be fooled by the tricky wording that makes this sound like a good thing. These folks are very unambiguously screwing over the community and making it sound otherwise.

As usual, remember to never sign a CLA.

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

#97

Post by cxr » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

Pannoniae wrote: post #62

Macha wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 : ht…

> most of the attacks against the GPL, AGPL and SSPL are done by corporate shills, and OSI is also full of them

To underscore something important in this discussion: there is no "The GPL is Not an Open Source License" post on the OSI blog, nor will there ever be one. GPL and AGPL have OSI approval.

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

#98

Post by ensignavenger » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

seany wrote: post #78

camgunz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a broad opinion on CLAs, but the Element announcement [0] says it's just the Apache Software Foundation's CLA, which I think most people are fine with [1]. It's more or less just a copyright/patent grant. [0]: https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ [1]: https://www.apache.org/licenses/contributor-agreements.html#...

They're ok with it when it goes to the ASF; which is not what's going on here.

Matrix even has a foundation, they could have the CLA go tot he Matrix Foundation... but they aren't. Even then, I trust the Apache Foundation more than the Matrix Foundation- not that I have any particular distrust of the Matrix Foundation up to this point, just that they don't have the same track record as the Apache Foundation.

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

#99

Post by ryukafalz » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #84

ryukafalz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

But previously, anyone who wanted to deny end users from accessing their modified version of the source code could do so, immediately and at no cost to themselves. This adds a barrier to doing so.

I'm not saying it's the ideal situation. What I'm saying is that from the perspective of someone who wants to ensure that end users retain access to the source code (which describes me!) this seems to accomplish that goal better than the previous license.

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

#100

Post by ensignavenger » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #69

ensignavenger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

If I (and everyone else) have the same power to make a proprietary fork as they do, then I don't mind so much. It is when they have more power than everyone else that I start to mind.