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> 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 previ

> 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.