Clarification on project's license and open source state · standardnotes/forum · Discussion #3196
github.com
Hello 👋, Just came across this project, and saw the app being advertised as open source, like on this page where it's advertised as "100% open source". Looking at the app repo though, the licensing...

Hello everyone,

I’ve been using Standard Notes on the recommendation of Privacy Guides since the beginning of this year, I believe, and it has truly been a fantastic experience. It serves my purpose perfectly, is truly cross-platform, open source, and lightweight. It was a real find, and I couldn’t be happier to have it installed. However, it seems that they are planning to change the licensing to one that restricts companies from abusing their code (which makes sense), but I wanted to know if this goes against the guidelines in terms of considering it recommendable.

I don’t really understand licenses, so correct me if I’m wrong, but with this change if the project becomes private, a fork couldn’t be created for all users who want to continue having the software format but not the backend… Is that correct?

Thanks

  • thesmokingman@programming.devEnglish
    12·
    9 months ago

    If they push AGPL, then the code is still open, it’s just explicitly copyleft. Any GPL license imposes serious restrictions on what the end user can do. AGPL further restricts what end users can do. Copyleft is similar but different from open source. Basically all they’re doing is leaving the code open to view but preventing anyone from money off of it.

    Honestly for people like yourself this is exactly what you want for privacy software. Copyleft with commercial restrictions is basically the whole FSF vibe. This is much ado about nothing; previously the code was unlicensed on GitHub which is much more restrictive than AGPL.

    • Solar Bear@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      If they push AGPL, then the code is still open

      My understanding is that they are only applying AGPL to the current version and going forward all versions will no longer be AGPL. However if they have accepted contributions that were not covered by an agreement to transfer copyright, this is illegal without obtaining explicit approval from all contributors.

      Copyleft with commercial restrictions is basically the whole FSF vibe.

      No, I don’t think you understand the free software movement at all. It has never been strictly noncommercial. Open source has never been a vow of poverty.

      Honestly for people like yourself this is exactly what you want for privacy software. […] This is much ado about nothing; previously the code was unlicensed on GitHub which is much more restrictive than AGPL.

      BY-NC-SA is considered non-free by everybody, including the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, and even Creative Commons themselves.

      https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/freeworks/
      https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
      https://opensource.org/licenses/

      Furthermore, Creative Commons strongly warns against using these licenses for software for this very reason.

      https://creativecommons.org/faq/#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F

      “Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software?”

      "We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses listed as free by the Free Software Foundation and listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative. "

      “Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses.”

      • thesmokingman@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        ~I’m not sure why you brought up the CC license; unlicensed GitHub repos do not use that and, generally, it’s understood that CC licenses cover documentation only for the reasons you cited.~

        I think you and I fundamentally disagree about the point of FSF. Open source is not a vow of poverty, you’re right; copyleft damn near is. Open source is an umbrella that covers both open and copyleft licenses. For the average business that wants to keep closed source code, copyleft modules are poison. I’ve handled the compliance process for both SMB and enterprise companies. Unless you’re someone like Red Hat, copyleft is basically noncommercial. AGPL, SSPL, and BSL are joke licenses that also present the exact same problems as copyleft albeit much worse for businesses to pick up. If you couldn’t tell, I don’t like copyleft code because I don’t think it’s okay to place restrictions on code beyond the basic litigation coverage things like the Apache 2.0 offer.

        ~As for what SN is doing, my read of that was the code would be AGPL moving forward. My understanding is that you don’t need contributor approval to apply it (depending on the original license; in the case of the unlicensed code they have full power) but you do need contributor approval to remove it. If you’re right and they’re going to drop it after applying it, they’re opening themselves up to litigation should someone choose to pursue it.~

        Edit: just looked at the repo; they replaced the root AGPL with the CC license instead of, say, linking the CC license for docs and leaving AGPL in place. The individual packages don’t have licenses and the root code (eg scripts) don’t have one either. Ignore what I said about SN; they did everything wrong and it’s stressful to look at.