this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Free and Open Source Software

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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Apache to AGPL re-licensing seems OK - considering that many other projects in similar situation chose non-FOSS licenses like BSL. But CLA replacing DCO? What will prevent the project from going closed-source in the future, without the approval of the contributors? This doesn't look good for the project.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

From reading some of the comments on this at HackerNews from others and from the CEO (username is Arathorn there), I think it is a change that needed to happen - though not an ideal one at first glance. I agree with twicetwice's take most of all. For what it's worth I 100% believe that they have everyone's best interests at heart right now, and that they're using the CLA to save themselves from getting buried by their proprietary opponents. I don't make a habit of trusting anyone though, and I would really prefer to see this revisited in the future if at all possible. In the unlikely event that they flip the license to closed, I think the open-source side of Matrix should still live on through alternative implementations and nothing will be irreparably lost?