Nothing regarding the license has changed in the last 2 years.
It seems like they consider the non-enterprise code to be licensed under the AGPL:
Thank you for the community discussion around this topic. I do recognize that our licensing strategy doesn’t offer the clarity the community would like to see, but at this time we are not entertaining any changes as such.
UPDATE Feb 2, 2026: To be specific, our license is using standard open source licenses, a reciprocal AGPL license and a permissive Apache v2 license for other areas. Both are widely used open source licenses and have multiple interpretations of how they apply, as showcased in this thread.
When we say we don’t “offer the clarity the community would like to see”, that refers specifically to the many statements in this thread where different contributors are confused by other people’s comments and statements.
For LICENCE.txt itself, anyone can read the history file and see we haven’t materially changed it since the start of the project.
If you’re modifying the core source code under the reciprocal license you share those changes back to the open source community. If you’d like to modify the open source code base without sharing back to the community, you can request a commercial license for the code under commercial terms.
Maybe we can hold the pitchforks a while longer, unless they actually make a negative change.
IanTwenty@piefed.social
on 12 Feb 23:15
nextcollapse
The contention is that Mattermost say it’s licensed under AGPL but then they add conditions which are incompatible with that license. So it seems they want to give appearance of AGPL but not give the actual rights that come with it. So therefore it’s not AGPL.
My understanding was (perhaps wrong?) that the “Mattermost Team Edition” is offered under the AGPL, and then the “Enterprise” Editions (starting with the “Entry Edition”) have additional restrictions (including the 10k message limit in the “Entry Edition” that everyone’s been talking about). They do a good job of hiding the “Team Edition” (it’s almost like the don’t really want to have to offer an open-source editions… 🤔), but it is there if you can find it. docs.mattermost.com/…/editions-and-offerings.html…
This seems like your standard open core/dual licensing, CLA controlled BS where open source is indeed treated like an inconvenience… Perhaps with more obfuscation than on average. Probably not really adding requirements on top of AGPL as such but they seem to be offering multiple releases under a more restrictive license either because they have the rights so they can do dual licensing or they keep certain components proprietary and don’t offer those with the team/community editions.
So yeah, probably within their legal rights and I assume there is still a codebase/release that you can use under the terms of the AGPL but they do seem to be looking for ways to make it be used as little as possible.
I could be wrong if the AGPL and other open source parts aren’t enough for actually compiling a functional version of this but this is what it mostly looks like to me.
I think the problem is that the license grant (that has been in place for a decade) is not that clear.
You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE
See MIT-COMPILED-LICENSE.md included in compiled versions for details
You may be licensed to use source code to create compiled versions not produced by Mattermost, Inc. in one of two ways:
Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v3.0, subject to the exceptions outlined in this policy; or […]
I read it as releasing the binaries under MIT and granting people an AGPL license for the (non-enterprise) code. Some read it as not granting you the full AGPL rights.
To me, the fact that they advertise Mattermost as “open-source” and the statement on the “reciprocal license” above indicates that Mattermost also reads this as an AGPL license grant. However, they don’t seem to be interested in fully clarifying the license situation. But, I think they would have a very hard time to argue in court that this license doesn’t allow AGPL forks. And I haven’t seen any evidence of them acting against any of the existing forks.
AGPL is restrictive so actually having MIT is a backup option weakens the AGPL license. And in particular having the ability to ship closed source binaries if you wish to, under a commercial license, means AGPL means jack shit here to those who want everything to be copyleft
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
on 12 Feb 23:16
nextcollapse
I Will never understand why the open source community hates the GPL license. Maybe they just haven’t seen themselves how big corporations taking advantage of free individual independent developers. I still remember the core.js developer, whose code is in pretty much every giant framework out there basically begging for any sort of income for his work while his family was going hungry in Eastern Europe. Angular, react, all major frameworks absolutely depend on it and never gave them anything.
No it’s not? The issue is on Awesome Self-hosted, where they had Mattermost listed in FOSS instead of non-free.
Also, if you read the ticket, you can see why people feel the way they do. They’re skirting AGPL rules with the compiled requirement.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world
on 13 Feb 08:06
nextcollapse
Open source and FOSS are two different things though. I think Mattermost is open source, just not FOSS and the licencing they mentioned might be wrong (GPL is invasive so they couldn’t have a closed source part IIRC), but it’s still open source as the code is freely available.
aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works
on 13 Feb 08:15
collapse
Open source and source-available are two different things.
honestly with their whole military! fuck yeah!1!! spiel, they can get fucked. along with all other corpos with their gaping assholes to cram evermore cash into them, and that includes element the corp; they got the other fetish - cops.
I hope they die like emby did when they went closed source. No one ever mentions emby anymore. It's always jellyfin vs plex. When they were open source, emby was a pretty big deal.
threaded - newest
Yup, migrated to Google chat last week at work. Way worse than Mattermost :(
From a read of that issue, it looks like it never was.
It isn’t really Open Source if it can become not Open Source.
I just was considering trying it out! Oh well.
Wow, that’s sad
Eh, that post title is quite sensationalistic.
Maybe we can hold the pitchforks a while longer, unless they actually make a negative change.
The contention is that Mattermost say it’s licensed under AGPL but then they add conditions which are incompatible with that license. So it seems they want to give appearance of AGPL but not give the actual rights that come with it. So therefore it’s not AGPL.
which conditions on top of AGPL are they adding?
My understanding was (perhaps wrong?) that the “Mattermost Team Edition” is offered under the AGPL, and then the “Enterprise” Editions (starting with the “Entry Edition”) have additional restrictions (including the 10k message limit in the “Entry Edition” that everyone’s been talking about). They do a good job of hiding the “Team Edition” (it’s almost like the don’t really want to have to offer an open-source editions… 🤔), but it is there if you can find it. docs.mattermost.com/…/editions-and-offerings.html…
This seems like your standard open core/dual licensing, CLA controlled BS where open source is indeed treated like an inconvenience… Perhaps with more obfuscation than on average. Probably not really adding requirements on top of AGPL as such but they seem to be offering multiple releases under a more restrictive license either because they have the rights so they can do dual licensing or they keep certain components proprietary and don’t offer those with the team/community editions.
So yeah, probably within their legal rights and I assume there is still a codebase/release that you can use under the terms of the AGPL but they do seem to be looking for ways to make it be used as little as possible.
I could be wrong if the AGPL and other open source parts aren’t enough for actually compiling a functional version of this but this is what it mostly looks like to me.
.
I think the problem is that the license grant (that has been in place for a decade) is not that clear.
I read it as releasing the binaries under MIT and granting people an AGPL license for the (non-enterprise) code. Some read it as not granting you the full AGPL rights.
To me, the fact that they advertise Mattermost as “open-source” and the statement on the “reciprocal license” above indicates that Mattermost also reads this as an AGPL license grant. However, they don’t seem to be interested in fully clarifying the license situation. But, I think they would have a very hard time to argue in court that this license doesn’t allow AGPL forks. And I haven’t seen any evidence of them acting against any of the existing forks.
AGPL is restrictive so actually having MIT is a backup option weakens the AGPL license. And in particular having the ability to ship closed source binaries if you wish to, under a commercial license, means AGPL means jack shit here to those who want everything to be copyleft
I Will never understand why the open source community hates the GPL license. Maybe they just haven’t seen themselves how big corporations taking advantage of free individual independent developers. I still remember the core.js developer, whose code is in pretty much every giant framework out there basically begging for any sort of income for his work while his family was going hungry in Eastern Europe. Angular, react, all major frameworks absolutely depend on it and never gave them anything.
No it’s not? The issue is on Awesome Self-hosted, where they had Mattermost listed in FOSS instead of non-free.
Also, if you read the ticket, you can see why people feel the way they do. They’re skirting AGPL rules with the compiled requirement.
Open source and FOSS are two different things though. I think Mattermost is open source, just not FOSS and the licencing they mentioned might be wrong (GPL is invasive so they couldn’t have a closed source part IIRC), but it’s still open source as the code is freely available.
Open source and source-available are two different things.
Sure, but which OSD criteria is being broken here?
honestly with their whole military! fuck yeah!1!! spiel, they can get fucked. along with all other corpos with their gaping assholes to cram evermore cash into them, and that includes element the corp; they got the other fetish - cops.
Hence why we need to distinguish between Free-software/Libre & *OpenSource" (& Spurce-Available as well)
MostlyMatter (FOSS Mattermost fork without user limits). framagit.org/framasoft/framateam/mostlymatter?ref…
I learned about this today from the self-host newsletter.
Newsletter, you say?
selfh.st this one probably
Thanks! On a newsletter binge after picking up a new tuta email.
Another Framasoft win
Legendary. Love what they are doing. I have issues with getting people on their platform because of the cartoonish style.
I hope they die like emby did when they went closed source. No one ever mentions emby anymore. It's always jellyfin vs plex. When they were open source, emby was a pretty big deal.