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LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

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Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#21

Post by bogwog »

michaelt wrote: post #16

To me, this seems kinda reasonable. The reality is licenses are all nonsense and none of it makes any sense. There could be secret patents nobody knows about. That precise wording written by American lawyers might not hold up in Chinese courts. There might be two compatible licenses, but one is 20x the length of the other; obviously some legal expert thought those extra words were needed - but are they? What's going…

The AGPL accomplishes the same thing, except there is no ambiguity and you never have to wonder "could I be sued for using this software?"

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#22

Post by thisislife2 »

michaelt wrote: post #16

To me, this seems kinda reasonable. The reality is licenses are all nonsense and none of it makes any sense. There could be secret patents nobody knows about. That precise wording written by American lawyers might not hold up in Chinese courts. There might be two compatible licenses, but one is 20x the length of the other; obviously some legal expert thought those extra words were needed - but are they? What's going…

> But nobody will get sued, and that's the only thing that matters.

Do you really want to bet your business on that? Vizio thought the same when using GPL code, and now they are in court. Software Freedom Conservancy sues Vizio for GPL violations - https://www.zdnet.com/article/software-freedom-conservancy-s...

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#23

Post by nix0n »

If you are looking for another self-hostable alternative to Slack, Rocket chat[0] is also worth looking at.

I wasn't involved in any of the Dev Ops aspect when my former employer used them, but the search function actually worked which is better than I can say for Slack.

[0]https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/blob/develop/LICEN...

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#24

Post by Etheryte »

bilekas wrote: post #10

Isn't this by default unlicensed then? I would avoid it anyway. Absolutely no need for that risk.

Yes. Also not to be confused with being Unlicense-d [0], because heaven forbid we use reasonable names for anything.

[0] https://opensource.org/license/unlicense

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#25

Post by throwaway150 »

michaelt wrote: post #16

To me, this seems kinda reasonable. The reality is licenses are all nonsense and none of it makes any sense. There could be secret patents nobody knows about. That precise wording written by American lawyers might not hold up in Chinese courts. There might be two compatible licenses, but one is 20x the length of the other; obviously some legal expert thought those extra words were needed - but are they? What's going…

I have used many open source tools and I have convinced my company to buy the commercial license of the said tools to get the enterprise version and support. Win-win for both parties. I use and improve my skills on the open source version of the tools I love. Our company uses great tools. The project maintainers get paid.

But I don't think I'll ever buy an enterprise version of the software which can't get the simple matter of open source licensing right. It isn't that hard. Thousands of developers are doing it.

If the tool was totally enterprise version only, I'd probably have less qualms about it. But to advertise a tool as open source license but then violate the open source licensing method both in spirit and the letter of the law is just too unprofessional for me that I'd steer clear of them in future and discourage anyone I know from spending their money on them.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#27

Post by Hamuko »

londons_explore wrote: post #17
constantcrying wrote: post #4

You should read the license, it seems somewhat insane to be honest: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE...

Looks pretty logical to me... It is AGPL 3.0, except they give you slightly more rights with a promise not to enforce certain provisions in certain circumstances.

It's not AGPL 3.0. The binaries are MIT, the codebase (from where the MIT binaries are built from) is AGPL 3.0, except for the bits of the codebase that are Apache 2.0, and there's some kind of a promise about not enforcing a part of AGPL if you don't link to their platform directly and exclusively use the bits of the code that are Apache 2.0, and also don't make a modified version of the software. And also you can just license it commercially too.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#28

Post by lefstathiou »

Someone tried to shake our company down once. They posted all this stock imagery on the web, waited for someone to use it with an ambiguously worded attribution policy, then have a third party chase you down and demand $100k but will settle for $5k.

It turns out we did attribute the right way (in our terms of use) and could prove it with logs of when we added the language and when it was removed after we removed the image, but I am sure they nail people all the time with this strategy. This didnt stop them from sending 20 emails, demand lawyers get on the phone, etc.

There are a couple of similar scams like this out there.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#29

Post by paxys »

I dug around for ~10 minutes and it's probably not an exaggeration to say that Mattermost might have the most confusing licensing of any software product in existence.

From the license page on their repo (https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE...):

> 1. You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE

So just the compiled versions, not the source code. Ok, at least that is clear. But - the MIT license explictly allows for modification and redistribution. So can I do that?

The next line.

> See MIT-COMPILED-LICENSE.md included in compiled versions for details

Except this file doesn't exist anywhere in the repo or outside.

> You may be licensed to use source code to create compiled versions not produced by Mattermost, Inc. in one of two ways:

> 1. Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v3.0, subject to the exceptions outlined in this policy; or > 2. Under a commercial license available from Mattermost, Inc. by contacting commercial@mattermost.com

What does "may be licensed" mean? Do I have to contact them for a license? Or is an AGPL license implied?

> You are licensed to use the source code in Admin Tools and Configuration Files (server/templates/, server/i18n/, server/public/, webapp/ and all subdirectories thereof) under the Apache License v2.0.

Sure, let's throw another license in there, because there weren't enough already.

> We promise that we will not enforce the copyleft provisions in AGPL v3.0 against you if your application ... [set of conditions]

WTF does a "promise" mean here? Is this actually AGPL or not?

Then they have copy pasted the entire Apache License, even though the project isn't licensed under Apache. Why??

Oh but that's not all.

There's a separate license page at https://docs.mattermost.com/product-overview/faq-license.htm..., which says:

> Mattermost Team Edition (Open Source) - Open Source MIT License.

Uh, what? That goes against everything said in LICENSE.txt. So now we are back to fully open source?

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#30

Post by rcxdude »

dooglius wrote: post #9

The license seems perfectly clear in that it's multiply-licensed under AGPL, MIT, and corporate licensing based on different use cases. Maybe this guy has reading comprehension issues, but more likely he's just unhappy with the corporate part and wants to stir drama.

It does create confusion because adding extra clauses onto whether you can use the AGPL kind of defeats the point of the AGPL, and creates a contradiction because the different flavors of the GPL generally all have language that tries explicitly to prevent such a thing, which is a pretty classic piece of confusion (I've had it when negotiating employment contracts and it's shocking how many people seemingly just never read the documents they're offering).

(EDIT: though, having read the whole document, it seems like there is just a trademark carve-out, which is explicitly allowed under the AGPL, so this seems reasonably straightforward, except for the strange 'we promise not to enforce copyleft if you don't modify the code' which seems entirely redundant. Oh, and the 'licensed to use source code to create compiled version' which seems like a very strange phrasing)

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