Hm, @logseq requires a contributors license agreement (CLA #cla ) to sign over all contributor’s code to the company, so does the @joplinapp, with @joplinapp also having the server component source-available.
@obsidian is closed-source, wants $50/yr for a commercial license, paired with their $10/mo for sync - that’s a lot of dollars for note taking.
Alternatives, anyone? Ideally open source to which I can contribute financially, without a CLA that will inevitably mean a change in licensing.
@fourstepper @logseq @obsidian Hello, any open source project of a reasonable size is going to require a CLA. Firefox, Apache, Signal and many others do. They exist because if the license ever needs to be changed it would be impracticable to get the authorisation of all previous contributors. That being said, just because there’s no CLA doesn’t mean the license will never change. An MIT project for example can have its license changed with or without the contributors agreement.
@joplinapp @logseq @obsidian Hi, to address your points:
- You mention if the license ever needs to be changed - what circumstances would warrant a license change, in your opinion? I would generally expect the license not to change
- In cases of both Apache and Signal the CLA one signs signs off the contribution to the respective foundations, not an LTD as is case with Joplin
- MIT (or other permissive licenses) re-licensing can be protected by a DCO https://developercertificate.org , (under point 4)
@fourstepper @logseq @obsidian That would be a good question for big open source projects who may have lawyers to advise them. For Joplin, this was mostly my decision and done “just in case”. AGPL is suitable but not perfect - if a better license comes up later on, then we can switch to it. With a CLA we can do this, without it we’re stuck with the same license pretty much permanently.
@joplinapp @logseq @obsidian Thank you for taking the time to reply here.
