Standard Notes is changing its license

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

nosteponpython,
@nosteponpython@lemmy.ml avatar

Thank you for raising this. My subscription was up for renewal next year, and I think I’ll look elsewhere now.

The only reason I chose to support S Notes in the first place is they were the best designed FOSS notes app at the time, and 4 years later they have plenty of competition in that space fortunately. Honestly I expected better from them, they say all the right things but I guess the greed just got too much for them.

QuazarOmega,

In terms of privacy, nothing would change, it’s still the same as ever so I think the recommendation can absolutely stay up, even proprietary apps are suggested on Privacy Guides.
In terms of software freedom, this is a terrible change and I really dislike projects moving to source-available models, in this case, as the other commenters said there, I don’t even think it’s legal, unless every contributor has signed a CLA in the past.
I feel for not wanting to be explioted by corporate, but they could have gone the dual licensing path and instead chose to restrict everyone’s freedom, even us users. Now that doesn’t mean forks can’t be made I believe, it’s just that anyone who does that, won’t ever be able to sell the service which could be unsustainable since they made the server CC-BY-NC-SA, that’s a big turn off for those who want to host that

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