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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

#131

Post by zzzeek »

tommiegannert wrote: post #58

> We believe in open source because it encourages innovation Sorry, but I was not amused when Dendrite decided to stop accepting PRs because they are a small team. That is far from encouraging innovation. To me, it seemed like lacking in sustainable FOSS management. PRs I sent were rewritten, squashed and merged by the Dendrite team, instead of them just doing reviews and asking me to fix what they considered unfitti…

> PRs I sent were rewritten, squashed and merged by the Dendrite team, instead of them just doing reviews and asking me to fix what they considered unfitting(substandard/wrong.

Core devs rewriting and fixing up PRs typically saves a ton of development effort. We field lots of PRs and while I make my best effort to hold their hand to get tests written and such, at some point it's intensely wasteful of everyone's time to have five, six back and forths trying to get the person to write the test case you are telling them to, which you could write yourself in 90 seconds. never mind then getting contributors to write good docs, good changelog notes in the format your project uses, etc. I'll give them one shot for that stuff then I just do it, I really don't have time to "train a new employee" (who doesnt even want to be trained, they just want their one-line fix) for every single one line change.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by phoe-krk »

benatkin wrote: post #118
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on Stallman explicitly saying that selling exceptions is fine [1]? [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

> I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more. Stallman's term is "free software", this said "open source". I use OSD to define it, so I consider it technically open source, but to me it's open source that isn't under an acceptable license.

The term you're looking for is "permissive". It is open source, but it is no longer as permissive as it was.

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

#134

Post by freedomben »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #103
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.

I don't know about "everything" but yes I agree, there are a lot of similarities here. There is definitely a possibility (maybe even probability) that Element is going to release proprietary versions with "extensions" to general customers, in ways that core would benefit from but they withhold for competitive advantage. I really hope they don't do that, but they could. Definitely we should watch them closely and with a skeptical eye, and we should call them out if they do that.

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

#135

Post by kiba »

saagarjha wrote: post #130
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on Stallman explicitly saying that selling exceptions is fine [1]? [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok. Repositioning your software to be nominally free but actually picking a license that maximizes the chance that people pay you for a proprietary version goes against this spirit, because it’s clear that you don’t actually have software free…

If the proprietary version is what they prefer over free and open source software, and which they are not allowed to distribute and modify, and which are otherwise completely identical, it's no skin off my back.

If they don't want freedom for themselves, that's on them.

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

#136

Post by LaGrange »

mrob wrote: post #116
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…

Are permissive licenses also "screwing over the community"? Those also allow third parties to use the code in proprietary software. What difference does it make to the community if Element gets paid for this?

Yes. That's why you shouldn't contribute to software on permissive licenses.

> What difference does it make to the community if Element gets paid for this?

Without that, Element would have to either pay people their fair share, or _leave_. They're not a charity, they're not doing this "for us," they're just extracting free labor.

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

#137

Post by cxr »

saagarjha wrote: post #130
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on Stallman explicitly saying that selling exceptions is fine [1]? [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok. Repositioning your software to be nominally free but actually picking a license that maximizes the chance that people pay you for a proprietary version goes against this spirit, because it’s clear that you don’t actually have software free…

> Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok.

Mm, that doesn't really summarize (or engage with) Stallman's thinking on the matter.

Stallman's position is that if it is perfectly ethical for someone to license their research under e.g. BSD, MIT/X11, or a license that is similarly permissive, and it is (of course) ethical to license it under GPL, then it is not more unethical to go with something which sits in between the two (copyleft for some, permissive for others).

To put it another way: if Alice picks a GPL-compatible, free software license like Apache 2.0, and then Goog makes something proprietary out of it, then Goog is being unethical, not Alice. If Goog does the same thing and gives Alice money, then nothing changes except the bad actor has less money and the good actor who created the software and made it libre has more money.

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

#138

Post by ensignavenger »

jenadine wrote: post #92
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…

> 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.

They claim it will be the Apache one in their blog post, but I doubt it, the Apache CLA grants the ASF a license, not Element or the Matrix Foundation. From what they have said, it sounds like it will be a grant to Element. The ASF CLA says: "In return, the Foundation shall not use Your Contributions in a way that is contrary to the public benefit or inconsistent with its nonprofit status and bylaws in effect at the time of the Contribution."

Based on what has been said by Element, they have no intention of making this part of their CLA.

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

#139

Post by Arathorn »

rrix2 wrote: post #127
Arathorn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I’m not going to name & shame them given we’re trying to sort out alternative licensing so they can continue their forks…

eventually we're not going to be able to continue this "just trust me, it's cool" line, man, this stinks.

What?! I'm not making up the forks!!

I already mentioned a bunch of them at the top of https://matrix.org/blog/2022/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update... when trying to get folks to donate to the Foundation. While this helped with new players, it didn't help with existing ones (although one did send us $500). So switching to AGPL is the next line of recourse.

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

#140

Post by kragen »

LaGrange wrote: post #136
mrob wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are permissive licenses also "screwing over the community"? Those also allow third parties to use the code in proprietary software. What difference does it make to the community if Element gets paid for this?

Yes. That's why you shouldn't contribute to software on permissive licenses. > What difference does it make to the community if Element gets paid for this? Without that, Element would have to either pay people their fair share, or _leave_. They're not a charity, they're not doing this "for us," they're just extracting free labor.

probably you should only sign the cla if they pay you enough
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