AGPL, on the spectrum of “I’m allowed to do whatever I want” to “they heavily restrict what I can do” sits firmly on the right side, alongside patents and other forms of heavy handed government intervention. It sucks how free as in freedom came to mean freedom to make rules about others.
A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
191–200 of 304 posts
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#192So 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…
Never is a bit much. It really depends on the language in the CLA. Are you giving them the right to change the license, etc? Some CLAs (e.g. Apache’s) are not objectionable. Some are very objectionable.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that already the case without a CLA?
With the previous licensing, yes. The change to AGPL would have ended the ability to make proprietary forks, but that ability was preserved by the CLA instead. This means that the only effective result of switching to the AGPL is that Element can demand money from anyone who makes a proprietary fork. Basically, the AGPL has been backdoored for profit.
Well, paying the bills when you're a company whose primary project is open-source remains an open problem.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Well then I don't really understand why you're upset now. Element is doing what everyone says you should do: have a GPL project and sell hosting, support, and proprietary licenses. We can't have the only model be "get donations or be independently wealthy".
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#195So 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…
Never is a bit much. It really depends on the language in the CLA. Are you giving them the right to change the license, etc? Some CLAs (e.g. Apache’s) are not objectionable. Some are very objectionable.
Element uses standard Apache CLA.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Yeah but then you have non CLA-ed code in the original codebase which in the context of an AGPL+CLA project, now it's just AGPL and their upstream has to be maintained separate from their proprietary offering.
So in that sense, it's no different than if the maintainers was just a collection of open source contributors rather than a corporation. They can integrate your changes as long as they comply with the license but they can't meaningfully profit off of them outside of any service you yourself code be providing as well.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#197Earlier 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…
> 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 pe…
This doesn't make sense, though, because Alice could just pick a permissive license and claim that everyone who uses it to make something proprietary is being unethical. The whole point of the GPL existing is to prevent people from doing this, because going "oh it's on them for ruining things" doesn't actually work.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#198Earlier 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.
Because being open source gives them a marketing win. The number of people who would contribute to this is higher than the number that would contribute to a proprietary license.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#199Earlier 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 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.
The whole point of copyleft is that the proprietary version is going to have changes in it that are not free, which are not contributed back. If they want to go "oh we can sell you an alternative license but you're not actually allowed to change any of the code, so it's just strictly worse than AGPL" only the stupidest of legal departments are going to go for that.
Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
#200I'm a big fan of AGPL + CLAs. It's a perfect balance where Free Software community gets what it wants (actively maintained, quality, free software that humanity at large can benefit from), while propriety community gets what it wants too (pay and get paid).
People who complain about it are naive and entitled thinking that someone can build and maintain something non-trivial for them indefinitely by just pure altruistic sacrifice and just give it away for free.
With AGPL + CLAs you get all the benefits of fully free software, while the copyright holders get something in return for their work: a competitive advantage and being able charge someone other than free software community.
As a developer signing a CLAs it doesn't bother me at all - my work is freely available to everyone with a license that preserves that freedom for everyone, which is what I cared about. The fact that it can make money to the copyright holder doesn't cost me anything, and is a reward for value they shared.
You don't get people bitching nearly as much about MIT, BSD, etc. where ones making most money on it are the usual big tech players in a position to resell it as a service or an appliance. Why does it bother anyone so much that company providing all that FOSS value will be in position to make money?