It isn’t Open Source if it can become not Open Source.
Mattermost is no longer Open-Source
Submitted 3 weeks ago by vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted-data/issues/1997
Comments
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
stuner@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Eh, that post title is quite sensationalistic.
- Nothing regarding the license has changed in the last 2 years.
- It seems like they consider the non-enterprise code to be licensed under the AGPL:
Thank you for the community discussion around this topic. I do recognize that our licensing strategy doesn’t offer the clarity the community would like to see, but at this time we are not entertaining any changes as such.
UPDATE Feb 2, 2026: To be specific, our license is using standard open source licenses, a reciprocal AGPL license and a permissive Apache v2 license for other areas. Both are widely used open source licenses and have multiple interpretations of how they apply, as showcased in this thread.
When we say we don’t “offer the clarity the community would like to see”, that refers specifically to the many statements in this thread where different contributors are confused by other people’s comments and statements.
For LICENCE.txt itself, anyone can read the history file and see we haven’t materially changed it since the start of the project.
If you’re modifying the core source code under the reciprocal license you share those changes back to the open source community. If you’d like to modify the open source code base without sharing back to the community, you can request a commercial license for the code under commercial terms.
Maybe we can hold the pitchforks a while longer, unless they actually make a negative change.
IanTwenty@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
The contention is that Mattermost say it’s licensed under AGPL but then they add conditions which are incompatible with that license. So it seems they want to give appearance of AGPL but not give the actual rights that come with it. So therefore it’s not AGPL.
73ms@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
which conditions on top of AGPL are they adding?
stuner@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think the problem is that the license grant (that has been in place for a decade) is not that clear.
You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE
- See MIT-COMPILED-LICENSE.md included in compiled versions for details
You may be licensed to use source code to create compiled versions not produced by Mattermost, Inc. in one of two ways:
- Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v3.0, subject to the exceptions outlined in this policy; or […]
I read it as releasing the binaries under MIT and granting people an AGPL license for the (non-enterprise) code. Some read it as not granting you the full AGPL rights.
To me, the fact that they advertise Mattermost as “open-source” and the statement on the “reciprocal license” above indicates that Mattermost also reads this as an AGPL license grant. However, they don’t seem to be interested in fully clarifying the license situation. But, I think they would have a very hard time to argue in court that this license doesn’t allow AGPL forks. And I haven’t seen any evidence of them acting against any of the existing forks.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
I Will never understand why the open source community hates the GPL license. Maybe they just haven’t seen themselves how big corporations taking advantage of free individual independent developers. I still remember the core.js developer, whose code is in pretty much every giant framework out there basically begging for any sort of income for his work while his family was going hungry in Eastern Europe. Angular, react, all major frameworks absolutely depend on it and never gave them anything.
Fmstrat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Eh, that post title is quite sensationalistic.
No it’s not? The issue is on Awesome Self-hosted, where they had Mattermost listed in FOSS instead of non-free.
Also, if you read the ticket, you can see why people feel the way they do. They’re skirting AGPL rules with the compiled requirement.
Anon518@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
MostlyMatter (Mattermost fork without user limits). framagit.org/framasoft/framateam/mostlymatter?ref…
mrfriki@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yup, migrated to Google chat last week at work. Way worse than Mattermost :(
biotin7@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Hence why we need to distinguish between Free-software/Libre & *OpenSource" (& Spurce-Available as well)
glitching@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
honestly with their whole military! fuck yeah!1!! spiel, they can get fucked. along with all other corpos with their gaping assholes to cram evermore cash into them, and that includes element the corp; they got the other fetish - cops.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Open source and FOSS are two different things though. I think Mattermost is open source, just not FOSS and the licencing they mentioned might be wrong (GPL is invasive so they couldn’t have a closed source part IIRC), but it’s still open source as the code is freely available.
aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Open source and source-available are two different things.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure, but which OSD criteria is being broken here?
inari@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Wow, that’s sad
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I just was considering trying it out! Oh well.
danielquinn@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
From a read of that issue, it looks like it never was.