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Comment by ensignavenger | Hacker News Reader

I think the AGPLv3 is a poor choice for what is essentially the reference implementation of the Matrix Protocol. The whole point of a protocol is to allow different implementations. Having a base implementation that others can freely fork and develop into whatever they want with whatever license model they want is a good thing for the protocol. I can understand if the Foundation were to maintain a very basic reference implementation- maybe even just a library or set of libraries with no real UI. And then corporations could develop an AGPLv3 (or whatever license they want) Project on top of it.

The CLA is an absolute atrocity, though. It is a bright line of perdition. No one should sign it.

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This is an interesting point and does sound good in theory, although in practice it's just the for-profit proprietary companies who are doing the forking and expanding, and then making a ton of money and not contributing anything back to the reference implementation.

I do also dislike the CLA, but I'm torn because if anybody should be making the money from these custom extensions/implementations, it should be the company who does 95% of the core contributions, and I don't see a way to do that without the CLA. Not that my opinion matters as I'm not connected at all to Element or any other players, but just generally speaking I'd love to hear potential solutions to the problem that don't require a CLA

fwiw, the main problem with the CLA seems to be that folks have assumed the intention is to use it to switch Synapse & co to a closed license in future - which I honestly hadn’t even considered as a possibility. For one thing, we could have done that already under the Apache license; instead, we deliberately did the opposite - to move to AGPL. The reason for the CLA is purely to allow us to sell AGPL exceptions to commercial forks.

I haven't analysed this myself, but the Matrix Foundation website just minutes ago still gives a strong impression otherwise.

> The CLA is an absolute atrocity, though. It is a bright line of perdition. No one should sign it.

Could you elaborate what's wrong with the CLA? It's the Apache one which is a reputable open source organisation, I'd imagine it wouldn't be that bad.

They claim it will be the Apache one in their blog post, but I doubt it, the Apache CLA grants the ASF a license, not Element or the Matrix Foundation. From what they have said, it sounds like it will be a grant to Element. The ASF CLA says: "In return, the Foundation shall not use Your Contributions in a way that is contrary to the public benefit or inconsistent with its nonprofit status and bylaws in effect at the time of the Contribution."

Based on what has been said by Element, they have no intention of making this part of their CLA.

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