Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

element.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 304 posts

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

#141

Post by jenadine »

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 you didn't have software freedom as a priority, then why even pick an open source license? To me they are trying to find a way to make a living, while still working on free software. It seems to me like a win-win situation: users get more free software, and they get to pay their bill. This is not always possible with every kind of software or business model though.

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

#143

Post by jacobr1 »

jenadine wrote: post #141
saagarjha wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you didn't have software freedom as a priority, then why even pick an open source license? To me they are trying to find a way to make a living, while still working on free software. It seems to me like a win-win situation: users get more free software, and they get to pay their bill. This is not always possible with every kind of software or business model though.

AGPL is a more free license than BSL, which is the most likely alternative for a company like Element.

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

#144

Post by Yoric »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #94
dbrgn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Isn't that already the case without a CLA?

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

#145

Post by benatkin »

jenadine wrote: post #142
benatkin wrote: post #123

[flagged]

Have you ever contributed anyway ? If not it was already assymetric since you were just an user and they were providing the software. Anyway, nobody forced you to use their software. Your loss.

I'm vindicated by not contributing :)

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

#146

Post by lrvick »

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…

> I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more.

If this was BSL I agree with you, but that is not the case.

AGPL is about as open source as it gets. It is forced open source.

I recommend AGPL to any of my clients open sourcing anything in a competitive environment these days. Free for the public, but greedy corpos that do not want to share changes and be part of the community are forced to pay to support the developers that are.

This AGPL working as designed, and is certainly FLOSS.

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

#147

Post by david_draco »

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…

> I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more.

If you sell someone a AGPLv3 licensed software, that is completely okay and FOSS. If that someone sells someone else a (maybe modified) AGPLv3 licensed software, that is completely okay and FOSS.

Not only Matrix can resell Element for a fee, so can you! That is open source and freedom for you.

The ability to change or dual-license has always been limited to special circumstances. That said, yeah, don't sign a CLA.

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

#148

Post by fsflover »

ralmidani wrote: post #122
benatkin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same thing, just looked at from different angles. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... “In practice, open source stands for criteria a little looser than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing released free software source code would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exce…

The difference is that open-source forces you to think about code, whereas free software about your freedom.

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

#150

Post by dingnuts »

david_draco wrote: post #147
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…

> I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more. If you sell someone a AGPLv3 licensed software, that is completely okay and FOSS. If that someone sells someone else a (maybe modified) AGPLv3 licensed software, that is completely okay and FOSS. Not only Matrix can resell Element for a fee, so can you! That is open source and freedom for you. The ability to change or dual-license has always been limited to spec…

No, the Affero GPL is not "FOSS". It is Open Source but it is NOT libre because of the additional requirements (forced upstream contributions even on unreleased modified versions of the upstream software) imposed on potential forks of the project.

Affero GPL is the premier tool of "open source" corporations to confuse potential contributors into THINKING that the project is FOSS and in order to trick them into giving up their labor for free.

Don't fall for it! If someone wants you to contribute to an AGPL project, you should ask: how much will you pay me for my labor?

The AGPL is the single best example of the difference between Open Source and Libre software. The AGPL is so restrictive and grants so much power to the original rights holder that it is really a source available proprietary license.

Stop giving your labor to for-profit companies for free! It screws all of us!

HEY DOWNVOTERS SHOW ME WHERE I'M WRONG IN THE LICENSE

I quit a job over this stance, because I won't contribute to this farce. But Element lovers downvote because they like being exploited and won't even comment to show me why I'm wrong about this

Post reply on HN