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

  • NoStepOnPythonEnglish
    1·
    1 year 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.

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Good point. I’m not sure if IzzyOnDroid considers the CC license to be “free as in freedom” but even if they do, they allegedly have a 30 MB limit per application, and the most recent SN apk is just under 100 MB.

      Signal’s approach is useful if the goal is to avoid being tracked by Google without losing out on the convenience of auto-upgrades, but it’s still bad in that they could theoretically introduce a client-side vulnerability that nobody external would have a chance to audit.

      You can also use Standard Notes via the web app, which can be installed as a PWA. And even though it’s not FOSS anymore, the source is at least kept up to date.