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by foreign-inc 1781 days ago
Everyone who thinks that because Matrix is Apache v2 license, it will remain permissive open source is ignoring the reality of an active project. If Matrix changes license tomorrow, the old code will still be Apache v2. But are you going to fork the project to keep it Apache v2?

For some data point, look at recent relicense of MinIO, Grafana, Loki, Vector.dev etc.
1 comments
lolinder 1781 days ago
Top comment right now points out that Matrix doesn't require copyright assignment, which means they have to get permission from every contributor or rewrite the code in order to relicense.
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foreign-inc 1781 days ago
They don't. They can fork the "apache v2" version and start adding non apache v2 code given they are the primary contributor. If they own the trademark, they can call the new forked version "matrix".

What non having copy right assignment means is that they can't change the license of existing stuff. But they can change the license of future stuff using existing apache v2 licensed code which is permitted.

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