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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

#221

Post by ensignavenger »

Arathorn wrote: post #139
rrix2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That post mentions a few big companies using the Matrix protocol, but are any of them using proprietary forks of Element/Synapse/Dendrite?

Another thing not clear from that post was the layoffs- were those layoffs at the Foundation, or Element corp? Either way it was a loss to the Matrix community, for certain!

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

#222

Post by kragen »

pgeorgi wrote: post #172
kragen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The easiest route towards that might be contract work or employment.

that'll depend on the preferences of the individual contributor; some might be perfectly content with a single lump-sum payment for signing the cla, but it's true that it might be difficult for the company to negotiate something so simple with other contributors

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

#223

Post by lannisterstark »

Arathorn wrote: post #212
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the only way that Element can retain the right to provide alternative licenses to proprietary forks is if it has the right to do so, which means requiring a CLA You wouldn't need a CLA if you didn't want to reserve the exclusive right to move from an open source model to an open core model. You wouldn't need a CLA if you didn't want the privilege to switch away from an open source licence at will. Yes, a C…

We don’t want to un-open-source the project. We’re not trying to pull a hashicorp or set up to do so; we just want the option to dual license to sell AGPL exceptions.

I've used element every day for a while now, it's fantastic software... The trouble is that I want to believe you, but I'm(and I imagine certain others) having a hard time doing so.

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

#224

Post by lmm »

camgunz wrote: post #220
lmm wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Only if the diff against the Apache version is worth money though, which doesn't seem like it will be for a while. I can think of other more likely scenarios: - Apple forks the Apache version - Microsoft contracts some Element developers - Google buys Element - Facebook makes some contributions under the AGPLv3 (okay, maybe this one isn't super likely) In any and all cases, the community still has the AGPL version. I…

> I don't know what companies are supposed to do if not this.

Maybe there's not actually a viable way to be an open-source company as a business model. As much as I want Matrix to succeed, the world doesn't owe them that.

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

#225

Post by koito17 »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #24

Reminder - https://conduit.rs/ Rust implementation of the matrix server stack

I've been using Conduit as my matrix server with the help of a few programs I wrote myself to ensure admin user exists etc.

I am really impressed with how little resources Conduit uses. A fresh install with a few rooms was only consuming about 32 MiB of RAM. Compared to both Synapse and Dendrite, this is nothing! I haven't stress tested the server by federating with a gigantic channel like the official matrix channel, but for a select few channels on libera.chat with hundreds of people, I am still yet to break over half a gigabyte of memory used.

It's also refreshing seeing RocksDB being used as opposed to Postgres, at least for ease of deployment. I run Conduit in a single container and have all of its data in a single volume. I think a large reason why memory consumption is very low compared to Synapse is because I don't have to deploy Postgres. (Yes, I am aware Synapse also supports SQLite, but you quickly migrate to Postgres the moment you need to run any popular app service).

The only downsides I can think of at the moment are

- Lack of SSO support, which means my friends and I have to maintain dedicated accounts for Matrix even though all of my other self-hosted services use OpenID Connect a single IdP.

- Conduit does not send read receipts in federated rooms, though you can see read receipts from others.

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

#226

Post by lannisterstark »

camgunz wrote: post #42
thomastjeffery wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way that Element can retain the right to provide alternative licenses to proprietary forks I have a very straightforward and reasonable solution for you: don't do that.

A better comment here would be a little more curious about why they're doing it (so they can run a business and fund future Matrix/Element development) or to maybe suggest some alternatives.

They're allowed to say they don't like it and people shouldn't do x or y.

I'm not sure why you believe that every comment needs to sealion in some way or another, or provide alternatives. People are allowed to dislike choices made by others and state that. And just that. "I'd have preferred you didn't" is a perfectly valid comment to make. They don't have to do what the comment is asking, you don't have to agree with it etc, but it is a valid comment.

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

#227

Post by cvwright »

cxr wrote: post #105
csdreamer7 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? If they are doing most of the development they need a way to finance that. Selling GPL exceptions is a Stallman approved tactic.

He approves of developers selling GPL exceptions. He doesn't approve of buying GPL exceptions*. It's a subtle point. (The natural corollary to this is that if the Element/Matrix folks—or anyone—were to ask you for a CLA excepting them from the project's own open source license, then you could/should feel comfortable kindly requiring them to pay you for it—a response which should be the default in the open source worl…

Personally I’m happy to ask them to kindly maintain my new feature along with all of their other code, so I can continue to use an up-to-date version with very little effort.

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

#228

Post by StopHammoTime »

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…

Hard disagree with your sentiment here. The AGPL is what every company doing BSL stuff should have done. They will never deviate internally from their upstream repo, they have to keep it maintained to make it worthwhile.

Yes, they can relicense contributions to paid customers but that’s the case anywhere. People need to make money and that’s okay. The problem is when the publicly facing code is relicensed and a person who has contributed effectively loses the rights to run their own code. This solves that problem as long as that person continues to be a good open source citizen.

The AGPL rocks.

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

#229

Post by jeroenhd »

vbezhenar wrote: post #20
appplication wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the deal with CLAs? I’m not familiar with them.

One example is Linux. You don't need to sign CLA to contribute to Linux. It has contributions from thousands of developers all over the world. It means that to switch Linux license to, say GPLv3, you would need to get permission from all of those developers or rewrite their contributions which is not possible in practice. To avoid this situation, some projects require their contributors to sign contributor license ag…

AGPL also has some annoying side effects if you do t use a CLA. For example, Matrix has had a few proof of concepts for pure peer to peer network designs where every device runs its own server.

That would be impossible toddeploy to app stores like the Apple App Store because that store is inherently incompatible with (A)GPL. The only way you can publish (A)GPL code to iPhones and iPads legally is to dual license all code from all contributors.

With a CLA, a project can relicense the code to itself. Without it, the project can't upload their own project to the App Store and similar platforms.

I think you'd be crazy to run Synapse on a phone, but Dendrite is built to be much more efficient for such use cases.

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

#230

Post by cvwright »

lannisterstark wrote: post #223
Arathorn wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t want to un-open-source the project. We’re not trying to pull a hashicorp or set up to do so; we just want the option to dual license to sell AGPL exceptions.

I've used element every day for a while now, it's fantastic software... The trouble is that I want to believe you, but I'm(and I imagine certain others) having a hard time doing so.

Element has been giving us open source code under the most liberal license for something like 10 years. I think he’s earned a little benefit of the doubt.
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