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My understanding is they're already doing it, and they're already allowed to under the previous license. The CLA is also my least favorite part of this change,

My understanding is they're already doing it, and they're already allowed to under the previous license. The CLA is also my least favorite part of this change, but it is overall a shift towards copyleft vs. the previous permissive licensing. If this means the project can remain FOSS and the company can continue to work on it, that's a good thing in my book. If they ever relicensed to a proprietary license though I'd be calling for a fork.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
It's a great step, except that it effectively doesn't matter, because anyone interested in ignoring the copyleft mandate can afford to buy their way around it. The only effective purpose for a copyleft license here is to get paid for permissive license! I'm not against the Element devs getting paid, and I get that this is their best shot at that. I still won't count this as "a good thing in my book". The whole point of the [A]GPL is that the end user can access source code. Letting people buy their way out of copyleft effectivley nullifies that.
- ryukafalz 3y ago
  > The whole point of the [A]GPL is that the end user can access source code. Letting people buy their way out of copyleft effectivley nullifies that. But previously, anyone who wanted to deny end users from accessing their modified version of the source code could do so, immediately and at no cost to themselves. This adds a barrier to doing so. I'm not saying it's the ideal situation. What I'm saying is that from the perspective of someone who wants to ensure that end users retain access to the source code (which describes me!) this seems to accomplish that goal better than the previous license.
  - thomastjeffery 3y ago
    Yes, that is an improvement, but that improvement ends at the boundary of proprietary forks that pay their way out of copyleft. Encouraging corporations to pollute the Matrix network with proprietary clients will surely introduce fragmentation to the overall ecosystem. This will only hurt end users. The other side of the coin is that Element will be in a stable position to pay its devs, which is great! Regardless of that, I'm not a fan of this strategy. Hopefully it will pan out well enough that proprietary forks fail to compete with Element's AGPL repo.

thomastjeffery 3y ago

It's a great step, except that it effectively doesn't matter, because anyone interested in ignoring the copyleft mandate can afford to buy their way around it. The only effective purpose for a copyleft license here is to get paid for permissive license! I'm not against the Element devs getting paid, and I get that this is their best shot at that. I still won't count this as "a good thing in my book". The whole point of the [A]GPL is that the end user can access source code. Letting people buy their way out of copyleft effectivley nullifies that.

ryukafalz 3y ago
> The whole point of the [A]GPL is that the end user can access source code. Letting people buy their way out of copyleft effectivley nullifies that. But previously, anyone who wanted to deny end users from accessing their modified version of the source code could do so, immediately and at no cost to themselves. This adds a barrier to doing so. I'm not saying it's the ideal situation. What I'm saying is that from the perspective of someone who wants to ensure that end users retain access to the source code (which describes me!) this seems to accomplish that goal better than the previous license.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  Yes, that is an improvement, but that improvement ends at the boundary of proprietary forks that pay their way out of copyleft. Encouraging corporations to pollute the Matrix network with proprietary clients will surely introduce fragmentation to the overall ecosystem. This will only hurt end users. The other side of the coin is that Element will be in a stable position to pay its devs, which is great! Regardless of that, I'm not a fan of this strategy. Hopefully it will pan out well enough that proprietary forks fail to compete with Element's AGPL repo.