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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

#201

Post by lmm »

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…

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

They can, but they now have more of a financial incentive to do that, since they're implicitly going to get paid by Apple/Microsoft/Google.

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

#202

Post by Gigachad »

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.

Realistically they probably do like 95% of the real work themselves so it makes sense.

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

#203

Post by lmm »

gary_0 wrote: post #36
ensignavenger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you try to contribute code back upstream, the company will require you to grant them broad rights to do whatever they want with it, including to relicense the code you are contributing under a proprietary license. You do not get the same rights in return to the upstream code. So the company can yake your contributions and go proprietary and you have no recourse.

I'm surprised it's not more of a thing to have a CLA that allows relicensing only to another OSI-approved license. I don't see many examples along those lines[0]. And the "OSI-approved" wording would allow a project to freely switch between MIT/BSD/GPL/etc or even create their own license (as long as they get it OSI-approved) without having to hunt down past contributors for permission. I would never sign an open-end…

> I'm surprised it's not more of a thing to have a CLA that allows relicensing only to another OSI-approved license.

That would be meaningless - they could relicense it to MIT, distribute that MIT-licensed version to their subsidiary, and then have that subsidiary sell it under whatever proprietary license they wanted.

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

#204

Post by lannisterstark »

camgunz wrote: post #189
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 pr…

[flagged]

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

#205

Post by cxr »

saagarjha wrote: post #197
cxr wrote: post #137

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. 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.

What?

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

#206

Post by gorgoiler »

Probably a silly question but I’ve always avoided looking at the source code for anything which I think might later want to implement myself. If I avoid others’ IP I can claim I wrote mine in a clean-room and license my code on my own terms.

The reason is that I believe if there’s even a whiff of me having seen someone else’s code then I can’t make any claim to the copyright and, in fact, they will claim it instead.

So then imagine if I put up a pull request to synapse with a feature or bug fix but — crucially — I do so without signing a CLA. Do orgs like Matrix employ PR reviewers who work in dirty rooms (opposite of clean room) to review these, shielding their core devs from the accusation that they are reading others code without a CLA to transfer the copyright?

An attack from a kind of Doctorow-esque scifi story: you publicly fix your competitors bugs for them without assigning copyright, tainting their dev pools’ ability to claim their own code was a clean room implementation.

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

#207

Post by exabrial »

wolfskaempf wrote: post #185
benatkin wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've never see that detail, that's incredibly insightful. Granted, for outside the EU it doesn't win much, but I'm guessing most reasonable places would defer to what the host country intended.

That being said, as another commenter pointed out, the "make available as service" language is a bit weaker in EUPL than AGPL.

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

#208

Post by ensignavenger »

camgunz wrote: post #194
thomastjeffery wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm not sure who this "everyone" person is, but I have certainly never suggested having a GPL/AGPL project and then selling proprietary licenses. (The other two, very much yes.)

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

#209

Post by saagarjha »

cxr wrote: post #205
saagarjha wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What?

Your claim, if I understand it correctly, is that selling an alternate license is OK because you're not doing anything unethical directly; after all, you're offering your version with the code. If they don't provide their source, they're the ones being unethical, not you.

I don't think this actually works, because if you look at the reason GPL exists in the first place, it's to prevent precisely this kind of move. It is "immoral" to release your code under a permissive license, not because you are doing something wrong, but because you are enabling someone else to come in and take that code and make proprietary changes. So selling a license to let someone do this seems like the same thing to me.

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

#210

Post by ensignavenger »

kuschku wrote: post #180
asymmetric wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I don't understand is: how is other companies making money an existential threat for Element? It seems rather that Element's hopes of making enough money (to fund development) by selling hosted/managed services was misplaced.

In a market, you're always competing on cost/return. Competitors can just take the open source parts of the matrix projects without contributing code or funding back. As result, in a bid between Element and competitors, Element will lose because Element actually pays for maintaining these open source projects.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of things that folks look for when buying hosting or a support contract. For example, trust and confidence. I trust the primary maintainer of a open source project to be able to support me better than some one else maintaining a proprietary fork. In fact, the fork being proprietary means I am not going to use it when there is an open source alternative. However, I also distrust a project that is AGPL/GPL with a CLA to a corporation. If there were no good alternatives, I would probably choose the open source option to proprietary one... but I would try to find some one else to support it. Prior to this change, I would have defaulted to using Element/Synapse software, and paying Element corp for any services I require. After this change, I am looking for alternatives not only to Element corp, but to Element/Synapse the software. Even if I continue to use Element/Synapse, I am unlikely to pay Element corp for support services. I will look for an alternative.
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