so not only did they enforce a ridiculously small message limit, they also did it for the self-hosted version, and they did it without announcing it AND without a suitable migration path
and still no one from that company has admitted to it being a mistake?
In defense of them not admitting any kind of mistake, maybe it's not actually a mistake but instead a really well thought out, yet incredibly stupid, plan.
That'd be even more reason for them to have a solid PR plan prepared, to grind down opposition and gaslight everyone into giving up. Leaving all messaging about the issue to upset users is the worst way to handle it. Even just closing the issue would've been less damaging at this point.
I used to use Mattermost. Highly recommend looking at Zulip as an alternative. (It’s my favourite slack alternative and even better than Slack because it’s the best at managing distractions IMO. It also has an interesting history was acquired by Dropbox and then back from Dropbox I believe)
Am I understanding this right that the main complainant in that issue thread is an IT company that wants to resell the (free) version of Mattermost software and is now complaining that they have to pay?
At first they tried to say that "we're a school" and then when the MM rep said they have an Education license, they admitted that they are not actually a school, but rather a consulting company that is gouging schools by overcharging for open source software.
> an IT company that wants to resell the (free) version of Mattermost software and is now complaining that they have to pay?
A user that was following the letter of the license and has suddenly had their access to the software restricted without warning.
Open source software means people are entirely within their rights to sell it to others, perhaps creating value by providing the warranty that all licenses expressly disclaim.
They're now a defense contractor, the copy on their website sounds like military cosplaying.... Probably chasing the stupid profits of Anduril and Palantir, and doing the old open source rugpull in the process.
Zulip (for Slack) and Wekan (for Trello) are good replacements, save yourself the ethical and technical worries.
So so weird that we live in a timeline where Anduril and Palantir are military contractors of the US and other governments.
I know it’s somewhat of a tired observation by now but I still wonder every time how badly you have to misread LOTR to name your company after the witch kings cursed surveillance artefacts.
I wonder when the first weapons manufacturing company calls themselves Angmar or Uruk-hai.
The names are really dope though I have to give them that…
Knives were too, and yet I'm not calling people to use forks instead. There is a difference between military contractors and generic tools.
Edit: sorry, hotheaded reply. I assume you mean that the creator of mIRC was encouraging it (though it's not mentioned anywhere). I still.stand by my analogy, but I see your point given your assumption.
> I assume you mean that the creator of mIRC was aware of it and encouraging it.
Like most licensed software, it was likely licensed by “US Government” or “Department of Defense”. Plus, it was openly written about back in the day. It was well known. No clauses in their licensing to prevent its use for those purposes.
Comparing to Mattermost and amplifying the original comment, Mattermost website is openly associating with PlatformOne.
> Would be a shame if someone with too much time on their hands dug into the binary and added a few zeroes to the message limit
Can this be done via some binary-patch tool? Really curious. It would save recompile efforts.
edit: link
edit 2: I just realized, their Ubuntu repository only contains the Enterprise edition labeled "Free edition". This is really confusing. I does look like entishitification has started long ago: https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment-guide/server/deploy-l...
Maintaining your own fork is a ton of work. Even if it's just routinely rebasing on upstream and maintaining your own upgrade infrastructure and doing releases, that's far from trivial.
The open source community really needs to stop with the "just fork it" mindset.
I use MM for about a year. Forking it would be a major undertaking as the number of vulnerabilities for which you would need to backport is quite high like 5 a month?). Last time they removed features from free (group calls in v10) there was a lot of grumbling but thats it.
I don't think the implication is that anyone as an individual would fork it.
I think the implication is that some other interested org could very easily step in and assume the role that the Mattermost org was in, and everyone would very eagerly switch and leave Mattermost itself speaking to an empty room.
>The open source community really needs to stop with the "just fork it" mindset.
The open source community really needs to stop with the "just do everything i want for free" mindset.
I mean, open source does not mean you're entitled to free support, and free in free software is not about money. I think people depend too much on those projects and then act entitled.
Of course the open source bait and switch done by companies is a shitty behavior worth calling out, but the companies exist to earn money and at this point this can be expected.
I don't think I've expressed a "just do everything I want for free" mindset. In fact, I'm pushing against the idea that someone should just fork Mattermost and maintain that fork for free.
I do think this development represents a bait and switch though.
glancing through the code, it doesn't seem like it be that hard to remove limitations such as this. PostHistoryLimit/postHistoryLimit interpreted from License Limits. a little poke here and there and I'd guess the limitations would disappear.
The time and energy that it takes to do it and build it, and then make it easy for current users to move their automatic updates to the fork, then maintaining it etc.
AGPL and Apache are both open source licenses. So I’m not getting what the confusion would be as an end user, who won’t be modifying the software or packaging it for sale.
Nothing. Open Source is dying. The model to finance open source work (well-off suburban american dads or as a portfolio show off) no longer apply. The old generation that believed in this model is retiring and for the new generation it pays better to "network", leet code, or spam your resume to thousands of employers.
Now couple that with the fact that supply-chain control is profitable (legally or illegally); I think the next 5-10 years will be interesting.
I looked at it for company chat and data, but those weird limits in functionality making in unusable was just too much, so them doing this too is not really surprising. Are they low on money?
What's mattermost? People in the GitHub comments say "I just need messages" but there's lots of self hosted messaging apps/servers, no? XMPP comes to mind immediately.
It's another level of insane to put hard limits for self hosted open source software. I'm surprised so few people in the thread have just changed the source code and build it themselves.
I'm not sure about MIT, but the GNU license specifically requires the application licensed to be available in source code (human readable and editable form or similar verbiage).
The FSF calls it a "free license" [1] and I don't think they would if they didn't make the source code available.
Source code available is necessary but not sufficient for Free software, see [2]
> Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.
I think that the photos they have on their front page should be enough to tell you who is their target market.
I've invented this heuristic: if the page that describes the project uses the word "solutions", then they'll attempt to use "open source" to obtain free labour, but will distribute the revenues only amongst those people who actually have control.
I don't think the GP implied anything about race? The photos I see are war frigates, power plants, some sort of military operations center, and commercial airliners.
I left every option open for OP to explain. I personally couldn't care less what skin colour are in any of the photos. Not a single one of them match my own.
Everything you mentioned in that list in people who can pay. As opposed to people who code and they use what they code, and furthermore share it with other people who also code and use what they code.
It's "open source" so that they save on developer costs, not for ideological reasons, and you can tell from the photos on their front page - that's what I was implying.
I think this is kind of cynical. I often adopt open source tools because I want to avoid vendor lockin. And so do many. It's not like I say, "Wow. Another code base to dive into and spend hours trying to understand." Nope. I just want the assurance that I can do it if I ever need to do so.
Governmental organizations and corporate firms is the vibe (or maybe that was obvious and you're just trolling).
I think the point was that open source hasn't often been supported by companies serving these kinds of markets and the interests of the broader community are often sidelined.
> “Mattermost only got where it is today because of the open-source community.”
Not really? FOSS communities overestimate their importance on a daily basis.
Case in point: Linux. 90%+ of commits were corporate sponsored… in 2004. The pure community member does almost nothing of importance for Linux anymore; or any of these projects.
Bait contributors by a FOSS-like model, then switch the mode to sell the results of their contributions without paying them back. What a classic.
You can switch to https://framagit.org/framasoft/framateam/mostlymatter which doesn't have the user limit crap.
so not only did they enforce a ridiculously small message limit, they also did it for the self-hosted version, and they did it without announcing it AND without a suitable migration path
and still no one from that company has admitted to it being a mistake?
very nice
In defense of them not admitting any kind of mistake, maybe it's not actually a mistake but instead a really well thought out, yet incredibly stupid, plan.
aka "it's a good idea to turn our productivity software into ransomware" plan
The distinction isn’t non-discriminating, but if it is then, what it is, I believe.
That'd be even more reason for them to have a solid PR plan prepared, to grind down opposition and gaslight everyone into giving up. Leaving all messaging about the issue to upset users is the worst way to handle it. Even just closing the issue would've been less damaging at this point.
Yeah I'm mostly confused about their lack of communication.
If they want to do that then, as every corporate "open source", they are free to do so but why not communicate that at least in the release post?
Any potential free user who would consider going paid will now be starting off their relationship negatively.
Really weird strategy.
what license do they use? If a true FOSS license it's time to fork...
Appears to be "open core" agpl https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost?tab=readme-ov-file
Not sure what isn't included in the core though.
I used to use Mattermost. Highly recommend looking at Zulip as an alternative. (It’s my favourite slack alternative and even better than Slack because it’s the best at managing distractions IMO. It also has an interesting history was acquired by Dropbox and then back from Dropbox I believe)
Am I understanding this right that the main complainant in that issue thread is an IT company that wants to resell the (free) version of Mattermost software and is now complaining that they have to pay?
At first they tried to say that "we're a school" and then when the MM rep said they have an Education license, they admitted that they are not actually a school, but rather a consulting company that is gouging schools by overcharging for open source software.
> an IT company that wants to resell the (free) version of Mattermost software and is now complaining that they have to pay?
A user that was following the letter of the license and has suddenly had their access to the software restricted without warning.
Open source software means people are entirely within their rights to sell it to others, perhaps creating value by providing the warranty that all licenses expressly disclaim.
No, you are not understanding this right.
It's about rug pulling your users and cutting them off at the knees. I don't use mattermost but read the github thread in it's entirety.
The good brand of open-source software is basically being abused to do basic rug pull schemes. Sad.
They're now a defense contractor, the copy on their website sounds like military cosplaying.... Probably chasing the stupid profits of Anduril and Palantir, and doing the old open source rugpull in the process.
Zulip (for Slack) and Wekan (for Trello) are good replacements, save yourself the ethical and technical worries.
https://zulip.com/
https://wekan.github.io/
So so weird that we live in a timeline where Anduril and Palantir are military contractors of the US and other governments.
I know it’s somewhat of a tired observation by now but I still wonder every time how badly you have to misread LOTR to name your company after the witch kings cursed surveillance artefacts.
I wonder when the first weapons manufacturing company calls themselves Angmar or Uruk-hai.
The names are really dope though I have to give them that…
> I wonder when the first weapons manufacturing company calls themselves Angmar or Uruk-hai.
Luckily/unluckily, AngMar is one of those shady medical subcontracting firms instead...
On Kanban, I would instead suggest cryptpad.fr.
Crucially, it's end to end encrypted.
You can self-host it, or pay for having it hosted (or use the hosted free tier).
Has other things in addition to kanban.
I got a 1 yr account.
https://cryptpad.fr/
mIRC was used during GWOT for military. They just didn’t openly advertise it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147321
Knives were too, and yet I'm not calling people to use forks instead. There is a difference between military contractors and generic tools.
Edit: sorry, hotheaded reply. I assume you mean that the creator of mIRC was encouraging it (though it's not mentioned anywhere). I still.stand by my analogy, but I see your point given your assumption.
> I assume you mean that the creator of mIRC was aware of it and encouraging it.
Like most licensed software, it was likely licensed by “US Government” or “Department of Defense”. Plus, it was openly written about back in the day. It was well known. No clauses in their licensing to prevent its use for those purposes.
Comparing to Mattermost and amplifying the original comment, Mattermost website is openly associating with PlatformOne.
Thanks. For context, this is what you're referring to (many entities with that name):
https://p1.dso.mil/
Yes, exactly.
What's GWOT?
Global War on Terror
Global War on Tankers
For all the bad press element/matrix has been getting, I am happy that at least I don't have to deal with this as well.
This seems to be only for the Enterprise edition. The "free" Team edition should not have this limit:
https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues/34271#issuec...
Also one of the comments:
> Would be a shame if someone with too much time on their hands dug into the binary and added a few zeroes to the message limit
Can this be done via some binary-patch tool? Really curious. It would save recompile efforts.
edit: link
edit 2: I just realized, their Ubuntu repository only contains the Enterprise edition labeled "Free edition". This is really confusing. I does look like entishitification has started long ago: https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment-guide/server/deploy-l...
Is it legal to "patch" (remove a restriction) the binary?
Mattermost is MIT licensed. What is stopping anyone from removing this restriction?
Maintaining your own fork is a ton of work. Even if it's just routinely rebasing on upstream and maintaining your own upgrade infrastructure and doing releases, that's far from trivial.
The open source community really needs to stop with the "just fork it" mindset.
I use MM for about a year. Forking it would be a major undertaking as the number of vulnerabilities for which you would need to backport is quite high like 5 a month?). Last time they removed features from free (group calls in v10) there was a lot of grumbling but thats it.
I don't think the implication is that anyone as an individual would fork it.
I think the implication is that some other interested org could very easily step in and assume the role that the Mattermost org was in, and everyone would very eagerly switch and leave Mattermost itself speaking to an empty room.
Still need someone to do unthankful work, in which many are not interested, naturally.
>The open source community really needs to stop with the "just fork it" mindset.
The open source community really needs to stop with the "just do everything i want for free" mindset.
I mean, open source does not mean you're entitled to free support, and free in free software is not about money. I think people depend too much on those projects and then act entitled.
Of course the open source bait and switch done by companies is a shitty behavior worth calling out, but the companies exist to earn money and at this point this can be expected.
> Of course the open source bait and switch done by companies is a shitty behavior worth calling out,
Yes, that’s what we are doing here.
> but the companies exist to earn money and at this point this can be expected.
Expected != ethical. Also not a necessary, logical outcome.
What is legitimately expected is a pro version that has more corporate features. We’re not talking about $Xx/user/mo to enable SSO here, though.
I don't think I've expressed a "just do everything I want for free" mindset. In fact, I'm pushing against the idea that someone should just fork Mattermost and maintain that fork for free.
I do think this development represents a bait and switch though.
https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues/34271#issuec...
Wanting to use Mattermost's binaries rather than building from source?
Re licensing see: https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/mattermost/
glancing through the code, it doesn't seem like it be that hard to remove limitations such as this. PostHistoryLimit/postHistoryLimit interpreted from License Limits. a little poke here and there and I'd guess the limitations would disappear.
It’s not open source, it’s “open core” SaaS.
I don't know, but that seems somewhat beside the point. The restriction obviously was not added to test peoples ability to remove it.
The time and energy that it takes to do it and build it, and then make it easy for current users to move their automatic updates to the fork, then maintaining it etc.
The compiled binary is.
The source code is... AGPL licensed? But not the admin tools. They seem to be licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
--------
Yeah, good luck. Contact your lawyer.
AGPL and Apache are both open source licenses. So I’m not getting what the confusion would be as an end user, who won’t be modifying the software or packaging it for sale.
They're both FREE software licenses, which is more.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
Explain please. This interests me and I'm extremely curious about what you mean.
Nothing. Open Source is dying. The model to finance open source work (well-off suburban american dads or as a portfolio show off) no longer apply. The old generation that believed in this model is retiring and for the new generation it pays better to "network", leet code, or spam your resume to thousands of employers.
Now couple that with the fact that supply-chain control is profitable (legally or illegally); I think the next 5-10 years will be interesting.
I looked at it for company chat and data, but those weird limits in functionality making in unusable was just too much, so them doing this too is not really surprising. Are they low on money?
What's mattermost? People in the GitHub comments say "I just need messages" but there's lots of self hosted messaging apps/servers, no? XMPP comes to mind immediately.
It’s an IRC-like, group chat for Corporate that works in airgap. When HipChat was obsoleted, then Mattermost took over.
It's an open source alternative to Slack
Thank god i didn't convince my team to selfhost mattermost instead of using slack
… slack is exactly the same, except without even the ability to self-host?
It's another level of insane to put hard limits for self hosted open source software. I'm surprised so few people in the thread have just changed the source code and build it themselves.
They probably found performance problems at certain limits and "resolved" the problem with a hard coded limit.
... a hard coded limit... for self-hosted software... which is removed for paying users?
From the readme.md
> A new compiled version is released under an MIT license every month on the 16th.
What does than even mean? Is it equivalent to what we use to call "freeware". Is it legal to modify the binaries?
I'm not sure about MIT, but the GNU license specifically requires the application licensed to be available in source code (human readable and editable form or similar verbiage).
The MIT licence does not require this.
I'm not an expert, but I very much doubt this.
The FSF calls it a "free license" [1] and I don't think they would if they didn't make the source code available.
Source code available is necessary but not sufficient for Free software, see [2]
> Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Expat
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
EDIT Oh sorry, you mean for the LICENSE to be available. Never mind then.
You can compile MIT software and distribute the binary while saying “fuck you” to anyone who asks for the source.
You are thinking of copyleft (e.g. GPL)
If that were true, the FSF wouldn't call it a free license.
So, they limit the access to data on self hosted instances after upgrade? Sounds like a ransomware with extra steps.
Enshitification ensues.
Did they take VC money?
I think that the photos they have on their front page should be enough to tell you who is their target market.
I've invented this heuristic: if the page that describes the project uses the word "solutions", then they'll attempt to use "open source" to obtain free labour, but will distribute the revenues only amongst those people who actually have control.
Black businesswomen? Firefighters? White servicemen? White software developers?
I really don't get what you're implying. I don't see any problem with the photos on the mattermost front page.
https://mattermost.com/
I don't think the GP implied anything about race? The photos I see are war frigates, power plants, some sort of military operations center, and commercial airliners.
Think "enterprise", rather than "racism".
Exactly. But some people think everyone else is racist. Those people's skin colour didn't even register.
I left every option open for OP to explain. I personally couldn't care less what skin colour are in any of the photos. Not a single one of them match my own.
Everything you mentioned in that list in people who can pay. As opposed to people who code and they use what they code, and furthermore share it with other people who also code and use what they code.
It's "open source" so that they save on developer costs, not for ideological reasons, and you can tell from the photos on their front page - that's what I was implying.
I think this is kind of cynical. I often adopt open source tools because I want to avoid vendor lockin. And so do many. It's not like I say, "Wow. Another code base to dive into and spend hours trying to understand." Nope. I just want the assurance that I can do it if I ever need to do so.
Governmental organizations and corporate firms is the vibe (or maybe that was obvious and you're just trolling).
I think the point was that open source hasn't often been supported by companies serving these kinds of markets and the interests of the broader community are often sidelined.
Yes. They are a YC company, too: https://mattermost.com/blog/yc-leads-50m-series-b-in-matterm...
> “Mattermost only got where it is today because of the open-source community.”
Not really? FOSS communities overestimate their importance on a daily basis.
Case in point: Linux. 90%+ of commits were corporate sponsored… in 2004. The pure community member does almost nothing of importance for Linux anymore; or any of these projects.