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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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by lol768 »

Nice to see AGPL instead of something like the increasingly-popular (non-FOSS) BSL. Copyleft licenses are great, I've seen too many examples of permissively-licensed libraries being taken, worked on by corporations and profited from without any bug fixes/improvements being upstreamed.

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

#103

Post by WhyNotHugo »

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]: >…

Everything that you side was said of Terraform months back, and of some other organisation before that.

It is very unambiguous that this is part of a move to an open-core model. I would not consider this project open source any more, even though it still technically is so for now.

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

#104

Post by thomastjeffery »

themoonisachees wrote: post #17
MR4D wrote: post #2

I’m confused. Synapse and Dendrite projects are forked. Ok. But then they say they won’t be continuing to fund development and “They’ll need to get their upstream releases from Element’s repositories going forward.” that seems to mean that future downloads should come from Element? That sounds more like a handoff than a fork. Can someone clarify this a bit?

The old repos "belong" to the matrix foundation, but the work on them was mostly done by the element team. This is them officializing that synapse and dendrite are element branded projects, not matrix (so yes, it is indeed a handoff), except they are branding this as a fork because the license is changing. They also are changing licences to require downstream forkers to also open-source their changes, ensuring corpor…

> ensuring corporate users of matrix contribute back upstream

My understanding is that they are doing the opposite: by making contributors sign a CLA, they are free to sell corporate users their own private licenses, so those corporations can each keep a proprietary fork of Element's AGPL source.

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

#105

Post by cxr »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #65
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.

And? If they are doing most of the development they need a way to finance that. Selling GPL exceptions is a Stallman approved tactic.

He approves of developers selling GPL exceptions. He doesn't approve of buying GPL exceptions*. It's a subtle point.

(The natural corollary to this is that if the Element/Matrix folks—or anyone—were to ask you for a CLA excepting them from the project's own open source license, then you could/should feel comfortable kindly requiring them to pay you for it—a response which should be the default in the open source world, although it unfortunately is not.)

* i.e. so you can make proprietary software

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

#106

Post by progval »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #96

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 s…

> This makes it clear that they intent to ship under some alternative license, for a fee

They already did, as the Apache License allows them to.

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

#107

Post by WhyNotHugo »

Arathorn wrote: post #31
ensignavenger wrote: post #9

This really sucks. I have always had great hope for the Matrix protocol. The AGPL isn't my favorite open source license, but it has its place... but a CLA? That is a complete nonstarter. No one should ever sign a CLA that gives a company more rights to your contributions than you get from theirs.

Speaking as CEO at Element - I don't particularly like CLAs either from an ideological perspective. However, the only way that Element can retain the right to provide alternative licenses to proprietary forks is if it has the right to do so, which means requiring a CLA. Otherwise the license change would not solve the problem that it's trying to solve, i.e. to provide a way for proprietary forks to contribute back to…

> However, the only way that Element can retain the right to provide alternative licenses to proprietary forks is if it has the right to do so, which means requiring a CLA

You wouldn't need a CLA if you didn't want to reserve the exclusive right to move from an open source model to an open core model. You wouldn't need a CLA if you didn't want the privilege to switch away from an open source licence at will.

Yes, a CLA is the only solution to retaining the right to un-open-source the project. The problem is that you'd want to retain this right in the first place.

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

#108

Post by thomastjeffery »

jordigh wrote: post #81

> 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

This is a case where I personally disagree with RMS. Exceptions effectively nullify copyleft.

Even so, I appreciate what his position adds to this discussion.

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

#109

Post by dm319 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #96

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 s…

Isn't this the case for any GPL-like license? Anyone wanting to build commercial software based on GPL-licensed code has a choice - either publish the full source code, or try to negotiate a closed source license with the copyright holder.

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

#110

Post by rrix2 »

Arathorn wrote: post #88
ensignavenger wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. El…

> huge companies who bear no cost for supporting the Matrix ecosystem whatsoever discover they can sell proprietary forks for many $

What, exactly, are you talking about here, Matthew?

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