this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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Forgejo is changing its license to a Copyleft license. This blog post will try to bring clarity about the impact to you, explain the motivation behind this change and answer some questions you might have.

...

Developers who choose to publish their work under a copyleft license are excluded from participating in software that is published under a permissive license. That is at the opposite of the core values of the Forgejo project and in June 2023 it was decided to also accept copylefted contributions. A year later, in August 2024, the first pull request to take advantage of this opportunity was proposed and merged.

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Forgejo versions starting from v9.0 are now released under the GPL v3+ and earlier Forgejo versions, including v8.0 and v7.0 patch releases remain under the MIT license.

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[–] [email protected] 169 points 2 months ago

TLDR; from MIT to GPL.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

always a pleasure to see big projects going full copyleft amidst the recent influx of projects sadly going source-available

this is the main reason not to sign a CLA (edit: both the aforementioned projects seem to adopt CLAs, though it seems that they aren't hostile and are especially pro-copyleft. see this amazing correction by @[email protected] for context). you should not let a third-party use your copyright to restrict user freedom in the future because they swear "they ❤️ open source" now, and would never use your code to only their own benefit.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

Except both of the projects you just linked too have CLAs, which they updated on switching to AGPLv3. Both use them as a way to offer dual-licensing, so they can charge companies for an AGPL-exception by selling them a proprietary-licensed version, which then supports the FOSS-development. They both were also only able to change to AGPL because of already existing CLAs. At least in Element's case though, they created a two-way commitment in their CLA:

Now, CLAs come in all shapes and sizes: some good and some bad. It’s critical to understand that our reason for requiring one here is to give us the right to sell AGPL exceptions: not to “do a Hashicorp” and switch to a non-FOSS licence in future. We’ve made this clear in the wording of the CLA (using a similar approach to Signal’s CLA) by committing to distributing contributions as FOSS under an OSI-approved licence – many thanks to those who gave feedback on the original announcement to suggest this. You can find the final CLA wording here, derived from the well-respected Apache Software Foundation CLA.

Here's the specific text from the CLA:

Element shall be entitled to make Your Contribution available under Element's proprietary software licence, provided that Element shall also make Your Contribution available under the terms of an OSl-approved open-source license.

I personally consider that a fairly reasonable term. Especially because they specified an OSI-approved license. Element are always going to be bound to that now. This is like the copyleft of contributor license agreements.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

whoa! thanks a lot! that's my mistake.

thanks for the awesome info, I should've at least check the repo of the individual projects first (only did so with Forgejo).

I totally agree with you, and do think that it is possible to have positive and harmless CLAs. though I do think we should always take a step back and not assume that a project's CLA will be in favor of our copyright, with the case being more the exception than the norm, unfortunately.

in the end, I will always be happy that a copyright holder wants to be able to reliably make money with copyleft software, but I can never really face a CLA without at least initial hostility anymore. you may say I have prejudice against CLAs lol

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Unless you're selling the software or licenses to it, I don't really see a reason not to go copyleft. I mean, think about it. If someone tries to make your thing but better, they have to release the modifications, so you can grab it for yourself and suddenly you're at the same level. If they piggyback off your work, you can piggyback off theirs, and you have the advantage of being the original. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It makes just as much sense if you're selling it!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

there’s certainly a camp in FOSS that considers “whatever you like including commercial activity” to be the one true valid version of “free software”

like… if someone wants to take an MIT project, add a bunch of extra features to it keeping some available only with payment, and contribute back bug fixes and some minor features etc, i wouldn’t necessarily say that’s harming the project and this is overall a good thing? it gets the original project more attention

like it’s perhaps a little unfair, but if the goal is quality and scope of the original project - or even broader of the goal is simply to have technology AVAILABLE even if it is with a few - then that goal has been met more with an MIT-like license than it would be with a copyleft license

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

So, for the slow people in the back... (me)

Copyleft = permanently open source? Ie, you can't take the open source code/project and make it closed source? (or build a new closed project off of it?)

Or am I misunderstanding?

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago

Yep, that's the gist of it. In order to change the license from the GPL, they'd need the permission of all of the copyright holders who've contributed code under the GPL to the project. After a few months have passed, this basically makes it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) since at least one person (and likely many people) will say no.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

AGPLv3 is not anti-business or anti-money. It's saying if you want to use the code in a closed source project you need to pay the copyright holder

The copyright holder is the original author, not a maintainer or someone who forked a project and renamed it.

That's why the #1 thing mentioned in copyleft licenses is you can't alter the copyright notice and declare yourself the original author

AGPLv3 is a good license to choose. All the other licenses are naive and do not combat closed source projects and the slave worker that keeps our projects unfunded

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Copyleft means: "if you modify the program and share it, you also have to include the source code for your modifications."

The owner of the copyright (usually the developers or their employer) can still change the license later.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Copyleft licenses do not only benefit the developers. They also guarantee freedoms to users of the software. They reduce the risk of exploitive business practices, like creating a modified version of Forgejo with less freedoms to the users, which could ultimately trap users in a vendor lock-in."

God, you absolutely love to see it. So called "permissive" licenses should be banned because of this.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (43 children)

GitHub has long sought to discredit copyleft generally. Their various CEOs have often spoken loudly and negatively about copyleft, including their founder (and former CEO) devoting his OSCON keynote on attacking copyleft and the GPL. This trickled down from the top. We've personally observed various GitHub employees over the years arguing in many venues to convince projects to avoid copyleft; we've even seen a GitHub employee do this in a GitHub bug ticket directly.

You only need to know that corporations do not like copyleft to know it is good. The same goes with capitalists and wealth tax / inheritance tax.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It really applies to anything. Whenever you read of policy related arguments always look at the people complaining. Rule of thumb is it gives you a good idea of who the policy hurts the most. If it's large companies or rich people complaining by and large it's probably a good policy.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

So ironic how github is not open source and Github desktop is not on linux

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I really need to migrate my shit from github.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I recently migrated from Github to Codeberg and it was super easy. You can also backup your code automatically from Codeberg to Github just in case.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Same. Couldn't be happier about leaving GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Ever since I read this Article I have been wanting to delete my GitHub account and migrate over to another platform. I would give a summary but I'm incapable of doing so.

If this info is outdated or misinformation then please let me know.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Forgejo appears to be a self hostable code sharing web platform like gitea or GitHub. I've used gitea for this. Is Forgejo better or what? There is also Gitlab which is way bloated.

[–] lambda 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Its a fork of gitea. It formed when gitea did something that the community didn't like. I don't remember the reasoning. But, I remember someone sending me a bunch of info about it in the past and it was enough for me to switch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Thanks, I didn't know about that. Gitea itself is a fork of Gogs though. Wheel of karma?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

It worked from gitea when they went for profit or whatever

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I wonder why they didn't go with AGPL, which is made for server-based software like Forgejo.

From my understanding GPL does nothing to force hosting services to open their code as long as they don't distribute builds.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

As someone who worked at a business that transitioned to AGPL from a more permissive license, this is exactly right. Our software was almost always used in a SaaS setting, and so GPL provided little to no protection.

To take it further, even under the AGPL, businesses can simply zip up their code and send it to the AGPL’ed software owner, so companies are free to be as hostile as possible (and some are) while staying within the legal framework of the license.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It seems there was a pre-existing agreement to use the GNU GPL with Forgejo, and it seems to me that the GNU AGPL is not compatible with the GNU GPL.

There is more discussion about that around https://codeberg.org/forgejo/discussions/issues/201

I'm assuming that there has been some resistance to using the GNU AGPL with Forgejo (it seems the discussions about licenses has been contentious), and the GNU GPL seems to have been discussed much more than the GNU AGPL. It was probably overwhelmingly likely that we would get Forgejo with the GNU GPL rather than the GNU AGPL. I would have preferred that the GNU AGPL was used instead, but I'm not going to worry about it much since I probably can't change this situation for the better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

You're right, seems like GPLv2 is incompatible with AGPL. GPLv3 includes extra clauses to allow it.

From the GNU Licensing page

Please note that the GNU AGPL is not compatible with GPLv2. It is also technically not compatible with GPLv3 in a strict sense: you cannot take code released under the GNU AGPL and convey or modify it however you like under the terms of GPLv3, or vice versa. However, you are allowed to combine separate modules or source files released under both of those licenses in a single project, which will provide many programmers with all the permission they need to make the programs they want. See section 13 of both licenses for details.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

This is gonna stop corporations from making a closed source ver of forgejo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

permissive license

Definition?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

Wikipedia

TL;DR: A permissive license allows doing almost everything, including turning the code into proprietary products.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It means you don't have to release the source code of your software if you use the source code of the open source project

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Permissive licenses permit a broader range of use compared to “copyleft” licenses.

“copyleft” here just being a cute way of being the opposite of copyright - instead of disallowing others from what they can do with “copyrighted” code, “copyleft” requires that they (upon request) share modifications to your code.

Permissive takes away this requirement to share your modifications. “copyleft” is considered more free and open source (FOSS), permissive is more business friendly.

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