A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends
Element has chosen to pursue future development of Synapse, Dendrite and associated server-side projects under the terms of AGPLv3.
Synapse and Dendrite relicensed to AGPLv3
You're viewing a single thread.
This is pretty bad in terms of software freedom. However I see why they did it.
What needs to happen is that Matrix need to focus stability and user friendliness. Right now no major group or company wants it because its a mess
Right now no major group or company wants it
most people beyond the tech field [don't] know what Matrix is
Wrong
Amongst others...
Why you think this is bad for software freedom?
It allows for proprietary use of a FOSS. Its true that almost all of the contributions are from element but that doesn't make it right.
Element is in trouble and they are trying to stay afloat
Quite the opposite. Synapse was licenced under Apache licence, which allowed everybody to make proprietary fork.
Now only Element can do proprietary fork, as they are the copyright owners and owner of the work can relicence the software as they want.
The CLA that Element require to contribute changes to their Synapse version is the controversial thing. Because if you contribute, the lines of code you made are your copyright, so if Element takes at least one community contribution the would be locked to AGPL. What CLA does is that you sign off those rights.
Wtf is this take? Damn FOSS Evangelists and their alternate reality views...