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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

#181

Post by thomastjeffery »

camgunz wrote: post #171
thomastjeffery wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That doesn't make this situation any less bad to the rest of the community. How is the community suffering here? Let's say Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their versions over the next few months and then closes the source. Can't the community just fork the last AGPL version? You might say, "well then no one can take the AGPL fork and make their own closed-source business", but do you want them to? Even if y…

It hurts the community by promoting proprietary forks.

If Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their version, then that is the best case scenario.

On the other hand, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some really baller stuff, then Element's version has to compete by blindly reproducing that work.

Even worse, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some mediocre feature, but use that feature to make their users incompatible with Element's version, then Element will have to compete by blindly reproducing a feature that no one actually wants!

---

And why should any of us expect the best case scenario? Corporations are paying to monopolize this work. Why would you pay to monopolize something, then never use that monopoly to be anti-competitive? That would be fiscally irresponsible!

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

#182

Post by callahad »

grey_earthling wrote: post #170
dingnuts wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says if you modify the code you must distribute it. That means if, for instance, I wanted to modify Synapse to satisfy my users, for instance a bespoke authentication backend, I would be FORCED to release and distribute that change. This is NOT the way the GPL works, because the AGPL forces you to make your change available to the parent corp so that they can benefit for free from your labor. The GPL only forces y…

> It says if you modify the code you must distribute it. It doesn't. It says if you modify the code and make the modified binary available as a service, then you must share the modified code with users of the service. You're not obliged to let the parent corporation use your service, so you're not obliged to give them its source code.

I almost went there myself in my response, but I don't think that's the strongest argument since any of your users could request the source and then hand it over to the parent corporation, albeit only under the terms of the AGPL.

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

#184

Post by camgunz »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #181
camgunz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't make this situation any less bad to the rest of the community. How is the community suffering here? Let's say Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their versions over the next few months and then closes the source. Can't the community just fork the last AGPL version? You might say, "well then no one can take the AGPL fork and make their own closed-source business", but do you want them to? Even if y…

It hurts the community by promoting proprietary forks. If Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their version, then that is the best case scenario . On the other hand, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some really baller stuff, then Element's version has to compete by blindly reproducing that work. Even worse, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some mediocre feature, but use that feature to make their users inco…

> On the other hand, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some really baller stuff, then Element's version has to compete by blindly reproducing that work.

> Even worse, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some mediocre feature, but use that feature to make their users incompatible with Element's version, then Element will have to compete by blindly reproducing a feature that no one actually wants!

Can't they already do this w/ the Apache version?

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

#185

Post by wolfskaempf »

benatkin wrote: post #128
exabrial wrote: post #64

I 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…

This web page tells me they really don't want you to read the license. https://commission.europa.eu/content/european-union-public-l... You have to go to a list of languages, and then once you find English on the list it gives you a PDF or text, no HTML version. I read it, and I think the exception allowing for compatibility with the MPL would allow me to pretty much do what I want with a larger work, as long as I rel…

The fact that the EUPL is available in all the official languages of the Member States of the European Union is a very important aspect of the license for me. This means I could reasonably fight for the freedom of my software in the local courts available to me in my home country, which does not have English as an official language.

As the European Commission claims on their site, as one of the reasons they chose to create a new license instead of relying on those already available:

> The licence should have equal legal value in many languages.

In addition, the EUPL is not any license text some (from a legal perspective random) people came up with, but the text of the license was written and voted into law by the EU itself, therefore it can and does rightfully claim the following, which is invaluable to me as a FLOSS author residing in the EU.

> any litigation resulting from the interpretation of this License [...] will be subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union [...]

So even if the local courts interpretation in my home country falls short, the Court of Justice of the European Union will surely take into account the intended purpose of this license as laid out by the legislators of the EU.

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

#186

Post by GuB-42 »

dingnuts wrote: post #150
david_draco wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> forced upstream contributions

No open source licence I am aware of, including AGPL forces upstream contribution. They force you to make the source code available to anyone who asks. It is very different. Upstream contribution typically requires a significant investment, there is usually some process to follow, quality requirements, sometimes a bit of politics. Here, you only need to go to the dev machine, make a big zip file of the "source" directory and put it on a server somewhere. And you may even ask to get paid for the hassle, as long as it is reasonable.

As for what you will gain by contributing to an AGPL project. You gain the contributions of all the other contributors. And the original rights holder has no more and no less rights on your contribution than you have on the entire project. They can't take your contribution and make it proprietary unless you explicitly allow it, in the same way that you can't use the project and make it proprietary. It is the base principle of free software licenses (incl. AGPL), everyone has the same rights.

Now, the rights owner had the additional rights of being able to release the software under any license, including commercial licenses. But that's only for the code they own, not external contributions, unless they made a separate deal with the contributors. And once it is released, they can't go back, it can live its life as an AGPL project forever, get forked, etc...

As a contributor, if you don't want to be exploited, just don't sign the CLA and stay with the AGPL license.

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

#187

Post by taway1237 »

gtirloni wrote: post #175
lrvick wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The AGPL is not the issue. The CLA is. It allows the project to change licenses at will, without going back to all contributors and asking for approval.

Ah yes, CLAs are not a real open source, which is why they're required by uhh FSF.

I mean I dislike CLAs personally, but I understand why they can be healthy for a project growth.

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

#188

Post by gtirloni »

taway1237 wrote: post #187
gtirloni wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL is not the issue. The CLA is. It allows the project to change licenses at will, without going back to all contributors and asking for approval.

Ah yes, CLAs are not a real open source, which is why they're required by uhh FSF. I mean I dislike CLAs personally, but I understand why they can be healthy for a project growth.

No, the issue is not that they are not open source. The issue is the risk to users/contributors.

These two things are being conflated in this discussion. One thing is a CLA and copyright/license changes. The other is the license itself.

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

#189

Post by camgunz »

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…

Much of your comment is speculation and unfounded accusations.

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

It makes it clear they intend to ship under the AGPLv3. What's wrong with that? They can change the license at a later date? Just fork!

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

This is bananas; the AGPLv3 is extremely open source. And again, nothing prevents contributors from forking the code if Element closes it.

> What they are doing is a required step to pull the same stunt as terraform.

Didn't this result in the creation of OpenTofu? I haven't kept up and don't really have an opinion, but a cursory examination shows that their GitHub project has a gazillion stars [0].

> These folks are very unambiguously screwing over the community and making it sound otherwise.

They've contributed an enormous amount of work to try and move the state of the art in messaging forward in a way that respects users (being extremely open, implementing end-to-end encryption, embracing decentralization, etc). Your characterizations of them are super uncharitable. They owe you precisely nothing.

[0]: https://github.com/opentofu/opentofu

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

#190

Post by thomastjeffery »

camgunz wrote: post #184
thomastjeffery wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hurts the community by promoting proprietary forks. If Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their version, then that is the best case scenario . On the other hand, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some really baller stuff, then Element's version has to compete by blindly reproducing that work. Even worse, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some mediocre feature, but use that feature to make their users inco…

> On the other hand, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some really baller stuff, then Element's version has to compete by blindly reproducing that work. > Even worse, if Apple or Microsoft or Google add some mediocre feature, but use that feature to make their users incompatible with Element's version, then Element will have to compete by blindly reproducing a feature that no one actually wants! Can't they already…

Yes.

The change made here wasn't from good to bad, it was from bad to bad.

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