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

  • @[email protected]English
    29•9 months ago

    In terms of privacy, nothing would change, it’s still the same as ever so I think the recommendation can absolutely stay up, even proprietary apps are suggested on Privacy Guides.
    In terms of software freedom, this is a terrible change and I really dislike projects moving to source-available models, in this case, as the other commenters said there, I don’t even think it’s legal, unless every contributor has signed a CLA in the past.
    I feel for not wanting to be explioted by corporate, but they could have gone the dual licensing path and instead chose to restrict everyone’s freedom, even us users. Now that doesn’t mean forks can’t be made I believe, it’s just that anyone who does that, won’t ever be able to sell the service which could be unsustainable since they made the server CC-BY-NC-SA, that’s a big turn off for those who want to host that

        • NoStepOnPythonEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          Even if what they’re doing is legal, it still has a negative impact on the privacy community. F-droid no longer providing Standard Notes builds is going to cut off people from using this app’s updates going forward. It may end up being relegated to the IzzyOnDroid repo, but still not everyone uses that.

          At least Signal provides a method outside of F-droid for automatic updates.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•9 months ago

        Luckily for me, I saw this coming years ago and avoided this app.

        I did too, but because I’m broke lol.

        You can have zero expectations of privacy with closed source apps

        That is true, but for the front end applications, if that is open source and has sound encryption then the server could even be proprietary, it won’t be able to break the encryption, so your data would be safe, maybe not so much for some metadata though. In this case the apps were changed to be all AGPL as I understand, so that should be ok.

        Agree with all the rest, don’t like the maintainer’s attitude.

        Edit: I was wrong, even the app is source available now (CC Noncommercial), not exactly good, but better than proprietary I guess

    • @[email protected]English
      2•9 months ago

      they made the server CC-BY-NC-SA

      I just checked their Github and the app is CC-BY-NC-SA but the server is still GPL v3.